With the Nasdaq Composite touching near 14-year highs, exchange traded fund investors may want to consider equal weight options on the tech-heavy Nasdaq.
The Nasdaq hit a 14-year high Monday, closing at 4,309.03.
“People are recognizing that while some economic data has been muted, there is still a lot of value in the market based on corporate cash positions and multiples,” Matthew Keator, partner in the Keator Group, said in a Reuters article. ” From a perspective of overall fundamentals, things look pretty good, especially relative to other asset classes.”
The index is up 3.0% so far this year and has gained 37.6% over the past year.
Most investors interested in gaining exposure to the Nasdaq look at PowerShares QQQ (NasdaqGS: QQQ). However, investors should be aware that the ETF tracks the Nasdaq-100, not the Nasdaq Composite – the Nasdaq-100 includes the Nasdaq Composite’s 100 largest nonfinancial stocks by market capitalization. QQQ is up 2.8% year-to-date and rose 36.2% over the past year.
QQQ is heavily allocated to large caps. For instance, Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL) has a 11.5% weight and Google (NasdaqGS: GOOG) makes up 8.1% of the fund. Mega-caps are 59.7% of the ETF, followed by 30.% in large-caps and 10.3% in mid-caps.
Alternatively, there are two equal-weight Nasdaq-100 ETF options that allocate a higher percentage weight into smaller companies. By allocating the same weight across holdings, each stock in the index is given the same importance.