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VOO vs QQQ
One copies the S&P 500. The other copies the Nasdaq 100. What each holds, what it costs, and what US$100 a month in each really did.
The short answer
VOO spreads your money across about 500 large US companies. QQQ puts it into about 100, mostly technology. Since VOO started in 2010, QQQ grew more. It also fell further: from March 2000 to September 2002, QQQ lost 81% of its value and took until October 2014 to get back.
US$100 a month in each fund
Start
US dollars. Between 10 and 100,000.
You put US$0 into each. On 9 October 2026 they were worth
Real past prices, dividends reinvested before tax, fund fees already inside the prices, fractions of a unit allowed, no broker fees.
Side by side
| VOO | QQQ | |
|---|---|---|
| What it copies | The S&P 500 | The Nasdaq 100 |
| How many companies | About 500 | About 100 |
| Which companies | Large US companies from every industry, including banks, shops, drug makers and energy | The 100 largest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq exchange. Heavy in technology |
| Yearly fee | 0.03% | 0.18% |
| Started | September 2010 | March 1999 |
| Dividends | Paid out every three months | Paid out every three months |
| Run by | Vanguard | Invesco |
On US$10,000, a 0.03% fee is US$3 a year and 0.18% is US$18 a year. Both come out of the fund’s price, so you never see a bill.
What each one holds
Both funds hold the biggest US companies, such as Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia. The difference is everything else. VOO also owns banks, supermarkets, oil companies, drug makers and hundreds of others. QQQ leaves out banks and other financial companies, and most of its money sits in technology.
So the two overlap a lot at the top. Most of QQQ’s largest companies are also among VOO’s largest. Holding both does not double your spread. It mostly doubles up on the same big names.
The falls
A fund that grows faster in good years usually falls harder in bad ones. Measured at month ends:
- 2000 to 2002: QQQ fell 81%. It was not back to its March 2000 high until October 2014. The S&P 500, through SPY, fell 45% in those years.
- 2007 to 2009: the S&P 500, through SPY, fell 51% and was back by March 2012.
- 2022: VOO fell 24% and QQQ 33%.
Someone who started QQQ in early 2000 waited nearly fifteen years just to break even. That is the part a chart of the last ten years does not show.
Which is better?
Nobody knows which will do better from here. QQQ won the last fifteen years because a handful of technology companies grew enormously. Whether that repeats is a guess, not a fact.
The real question is how much one industry you want, and whether you could keep buying through a fall like 2000 to 2002. A wider fund usually swings less. A narrower one can win bigger and lose bigger.
Questions
Why does the long view use SPY instead of VOO?
VOO only started in September 2010. SPY copies the same S&P 500 and has traded since 1993, so it shows what the S&P 500 did from QQQ’s start in 1999. Its yearly fee is a little higher, which makes almost no difference to the comparison.
Are VOO, SPY and IVV the same thing?
They all copy the S&P 500, run by different companies with slightly different fees. Our index calculator shows how close they land.
I don’t live in the US. Does this still apply?
The comparison does, but the tax does not. If you are not a US person, the US usually keeps part of the dividends from US-based funds. Some people outside the US use Irish-based funds that copy the same indexes instead, such as CSPX for the S&P 500.
Prices: Yahoo Finance month-end adjusted closes to 9 October 2026, dividends reinvested before tax. Fees and start dates: Vanguard and Invesco fund pages, read 11 October 2026. Fund names are examples to explain how indexes work, not a suggestion to buy, sell or hold any of them. Past returns do not predict future results.
See every S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 fund side by side.
The same monthly plan in eight real funds, from 1988.