SweetValueLab
Write for us

SPY vs QQQ: a 10-year backtest

The broadest US index fund against the most concentrated large-cap one, the same money in each through the same decade, on daily prices.

HoldingsWeight · share
100%
Over the last
Starting with
Adding every month
Compare with

Up to 10 holdings and 20 years. Weights are relative. The comparison line gets the same money on the same days.

Running the backtest…
At a glanceSPYQQQ
Index trackedS&P 500NASDAQ 100
What it holdsThe 500 largest US companies, weighted by market capThe 100 largest non-financial Nasdaq listings
Holdings505105
Expense ratio0.09%0.18%
PaysQuarterlyQuarterly
LaunchedJanuary 1993March 1999

Fund facts as of 2026-09-06. Holdings counts change at each index rebalance.

Same question, different windows, opposite answers

Look up this comparison anywhere and you will find drawdowns quoted at over 80% for QQQ and over 50% for SPY. Over the ten years measured above, both fell far less. Nobody is lying: those larger figures are since-inception, and QQQ's includes the dot-com collapse, when it lost roughly four-fifths of its value.

That gap is the most useful thing on this page. A fund comparison is not a fact about the funds — it is a fact about the funds over a chosen stretch of history, and the choosing is doing more work than most write-ups admit. Change the start date above and see how far the ranking moves.

They are less different than they look

QQQ's largest holdings are also SPY's largest holdings. Market-cap weighting concentrates the S&P 500 into the same mega-caps that dominate the Nasdaq 100, so the two funds have moved together far more often than their descriptions suggest. The difference is one of degree: QQQ holds a hundred names and no financials, SPY holds five hundred across every sector.

Practically, that means owning both is closer to owning a leveraged position in a dozen companies than to diversifying. Add QQQ to the basket above, keep the S&P 500 as the comparison, and see how little the blend changes before assuming otherwise.

What to look at above

  • CAGR for the headline, but read it next to volatility and drawdown — the two funds did not deliver their returns on the same terms.
  • Max drawdown on daily closes, which is what you would have watched happen, not the smoothed month-end version.
  • Dividends barely register for either fund, so they are summarized in one line rather than broken out. If income is what you are after, the SCHD page is the more useful one.

Sources

Index rules and expense ratios from State Street's and Invesco's fund documentation. Prices and dividend history from Financial Modeling Prep's end-of-day feed.

How this backtest works

Daily bars, not monthly

The portfolio is marked to market every trading day, so drawdowns and volatility reflect what actually happened between month-ends — 252 observations a year instead of 12.

Split-adjusted prices, cash dividends

Prices are split-adjusted closes; each dividend is applied as cash on its ex-date at the matching split-adjusted per-share amount. Dividend-adjusted (“total return”) prices are never used, so income is counted exactly once.

A lump sum, or money every month

The weights set the opening trade and then drift, unless you rebalance each January. A monthly amount buys more at the target weights on each month's first trading day, and the comparison line gets the same. No taxes, no commissions.

The window is the overlap of every holding's price history, and a dividend cut is only reported when both the annual total and the average payment fell. Full methodology on the backtest tool.

Questions

Which has performed better, SPY or QQQ?

Over the last ten years QQQ, by a wide margin — the table below gives the exact figures. But that decade was unusually kind to large-cap technology, which is most of what QQQ owns, so the result is as much a statement about the window as about the funds.

Why do other sites quote much bigger drawdowns?

Because they measure since inception. QQQ launched in 1999 and fell more than 80% in the dot-com bust; SPY dates to 1993. Over the last ten years both fell far less. Neither number is wrong — they answer different questions, which is exactly why the window matters.

Should I hold both?

They overlap heavily: QQQ's largest holdings are also SPY's largest holdings. Holding both mostly increases your weight in the same handful of companies rather than diversifying you. Add QQQ to the basket above and see whether the blend actually changes anything.

Other ready-made backtests

SPY, 10 years →Ten years of the S&P 500, dividends included.SCHD vs S&P 500 →Ten years of the most-held US dividend ETF.SCHD vs VYM →Quality screen versus pure high yield, over ten years.NVDA vs S&P 500 →Ten years of NVIDIA, drawdowns included.60/40 stocks and bonds →The classic allocation over twenty years — and what the bonds saved.

Page last updated . The backtest above runs on today's data each time the page opens. Open the calculator empty.