What law prevents someone from choosing to buy stocks from the NASDAQ 100 however they want for a fund?

davey48016 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can make a mutual fund or ETF with any stocks you want, you just can't call it a NASDAQ 100 fund if you're not tracking the NASDAQ 100 index.

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lxgr 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's an interesting question whether you could legally track the NASDAQ 100 without calling it that, or something very similar, e.g. "NASDAQ 100, but with a one year delay for new listings".

But assuming it is: How would you even call it, and how would you describe your methodology in the prospectus? "Tech 100 (compare with e.g. NASDAQ)"?

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tonyedgecombe 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is that really true? It doesn’t sound likely to me. Then again I’m often surprised by this stuff.

	▲	mandevil 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In order to call it a NASDAQ 100 Tracking Fund you need to pay the NASDAQ a licensing fee (same with S&P500, Wilshire 5000, etc.). The contract you have with NASDAQ will determine exactly how much freedom you have to change rules and still call it a NASDAQ 100 fund. I've never seen a licensing agreement, don't know anything about how they would typically read. There is also the concept of "Index Tracking Error". No fund can perfectly mimic the index, and that is expected and understood, but the goal is generally to have the tracking error <0.1%- 1% would be a bad track. And so an index fund could take the risk that they will have a tracking error and delay picking up SpaceX even after it joins the official index, but then if it goes up they will look worse relative to their real competitors, the other NASDAQ 100 tracking index funds. If SpaceX goes down, of course, they will have positive tracking error, but I'm not sure how much potential investors would value that. SpaceX would be something like 4% of the NASDAQ 100 at it's announced expected market cap, so a 10% movement by SpaceX would be enough on its own to get you into the notable tracking error range if you didn't have any exposure to it.

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dmurray 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Actively managed funds like that charge around 0.5% to 1% a year. E.g. [0] The most prominent Nasdaq ETF, QQQ, charges 0.2% [1]

Spacex will be around 4.5% of the index [2].

If you believe the thesis of the article that Spacex is about 30% overvalued, and if the only advantage your fund manager has over the rest of the market is that they will avoid Spacex, they will save you 1% of your money over the lifetime of your investment. Assuming you're saving for retirement in 30 years time, the fees will cost you 15% or more.

Maybe your fund manager finds a Spacex-level mispricing every two years. In that case, they're worth the fees. Some people will tell you nobody can beat the market. My employer among others believes very strongly in the idea that some people do make better investment decisions than average. What is certainly true is that not everyone does.

[0] https://helpcenter.ark-funds.com/what-is-the-fee-structure-e...

[1] https://www.invesco.com/qqq-etf/en/home.html

[2] https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/04/01/how-the-spacex-cou...

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WalterBright 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> the idea that some people do make better investment decisions than average.

Of course some do. After all, that's what makes an "average".

Some people are taller than average, too!

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Dylan16807 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They mean consistently make better decisions than a baseline index investor in a way that isn't luck.

Someone can win at roulette and make more money than the average player over some measurement period, but nobody can be good at roulette (when properly implemented and stuff). Stocks are somewhat possible to be good at but results are mostly random and the fee you'd pay is usually way too much.

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WalterBright 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> They mean consistently make better decisions than a baseline index investor in a way that isn't luck.

How would you know it is or is not luck?

> roulette

Has no winning strategy - it's very different.

The winning strategy with stocks is understanding the underlying businesses better than the average investor. Peter Lynch's Magellan fund did consistently better than others because Lynch had insights others didn't. When others figured it out, Magellan's returns retreated to market levels.

I.e. investors can do better than average if they have insight others don't have and stay below the radar.

	▲	Dylan16807 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> How would you know it is or is not luck? It's hard to know in the moment, but almost every promising fund has subpar long term results. Whether they lost their touch or were lucky in the first place, it means that seeking out promising funds is a very bad way to find a place to put your money. The number of funds with significant valuable insights is low, and the number where those insights are bigger than the fees is lower. Anyway my point was just that a big spread of outcomes doesn't prove that significantly different skill levels exist.

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bluecalm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You need enough customers to make it profitable at reasonably low expense ratio.