Here's How Much Investing $1,000 In The Invesco QQQ ETF One Year Ago Would Be Worth Today

Investors who have owned high-flying tech companies, economic reopening plays and “meme” stocks have made a killing in the market in the past year. But you didn’t have to be a stock-picking genius to generate some historically good returns since Nov. 10, 2020.

Even investors who took a conservative, diversified approach to the market in the past year have made a tremendous return on their investment at this point.

In 2019, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY generated an extremely strong 31.2% total return, but the Invesco QQQ Trust QQQ topped it with a 38.9% total return. The QQQ ETF tracks the Nasdaq 100 Index, the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange.

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Pandemic Sell-Off: The QQQ fund started 2020 on a high note, rising from around $215 to start the year to a pre-pandemic high of $237.47 in mid-February. Unfortunately, over the next several weeks the bottom completely fell out of the market thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The QQQ ETF plummeted as low as $165 on March 23, 2020, the same day the S&P 500 bottomed. At the time, investors had no idea March 23 would mark the end of the shortest bear market in U.S. history at just 33 days in duration.

By April 7, the QQQ was back above $200. By June 4, the fund was back at new all-time highs, but the rally certainly didn’t stop there. The combination of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts, unprecedented government stimulus measures, a virus mortality rate that was much better than initially feared and a handful of extremely effective vaccines sent growth stock prices skyrocketing well above pre-pandemic levels.

Charging Into 2021: Two brief tech stock sell-offs in September and October of 2020 were mere bumps in the road for the QQQ in the march to all-time highs of $400.99 earlier this month. Unfortunately, concerns about inflation and Federal Reserve tapering in recent weeks have driven the QQQ fund back down to $393.82.

Investors who bought the QQQ fund a year ago and held on to today have outperformed the total return of the SPY in that time, but only by a small margin. In fact, $1,000 in the QQQ ETF bought on Nov. 10, 2020, would be worth about $1,377 today, assuming reinvested dividends.

Looking ahead, the fate of QQQ investors rests largely in the hands of Microsoft Corporation MSFT and Apple, Inc. AAPL. Together, those two tech behemoths represent a combined 21.2% of the QQQ’s total assets.