Invesco QQQ Doesn’t Own a Single Bank, and That’s Not the Only Thing the Nasdaq-100 Leaves Out
JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo each released third-quarter results on Tuesday, and the two banks made more than $21 billion between them. JPMorgan’s net income grew 6% year over year to $15.3 billion, and Wells Fargo’s climbed around 6% to almost $6 billion.
Investors in the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) didn’t own a slice of either one. The popular exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracks the Nasdaq-100, and the index doesn’t admit banks — or any other company classified as financial, for that matter.
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And banks aren’t the only thing missing. Some of the biggest companies in the U.S. stock market are absent for a reason that has nothing to do with what they sell.
I don’t think any of this is a reason to skip QQQ, which trades near $742 and has risen about 21% in 2026 as of this writing. But it’s worth knowing what the fund leaves out before using it as a stand-in for the whole stock market.
Image source: JPMorgan Chase.
Two rules explain what’s missing
The Nasdaq-100 is built to track 100 of the biggest non-financial companies listed on Nasdaq, and each half of that description acts as a rule. A company can’t be classified as a financial business, and it must keep its primary listing on a Nasdaq exchange.
The first rule cuts out a big chunk of the market. Financials are the second-largest sector in the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC), at around 11.5% of the index as of Oct. 12. QQQ, though, holds no banks and no insurers at all.
The second rule might go further than many investors realize. Berkshire Hathaway and Visa both trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), so they’re out no matter how they’re classified. Oracle and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing are missing for the same reason, though both are tech companies.
Walmart shows how mechanical the listing rule can be. The retailer moved its shares from the NYSE to Nasdaq last December, and it joined the Nasdaq-100 in January. The business, of course, was the same as before — just the listing changed.
Has skipping banks hurt returns?
Leaving out banks hasn’t hurt QQQ’s long-term returns. Its annual return for the 10 years through September was around 21%. The State Street Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEMKT:XLF), which holds the S&P 500’s financial stocks, averaged about 13% a year over the same span.
