InsiderFlow › Glossary › What is the Nasdaq?

What is the Nasdaq?

The Nasdaq is America's tech-heavy stock exchange, and the Nasdaq-100 is the index of its 100 largest non-financial companies.

Born in 1971 as the first fully electronic market, the Nasdaq hosts most tech giants: Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Tesla. The name refers both to the exchange and, colloquially, to the Nasdaq-100 index.

Being tech-concentrated, the Nasdaq-100 tends to rise more than the S&P 500 in good times and fall harder in bad ones: in 2022 it lost about a third of its value, then recovered with the AI boom.

Concrete example

Over the 2013–2023 decade the Nasdaq-100 vastly outperformed the S&P 500, driven by tech stocks — with much wilder swings.

How you see it in InsiderFlow

On InsiderFlow these concepts come alive on real data: what big funds and insiders are buying, explained every day.

Frequently asked questions

Are the Nasdaq and Wall Street the same thing?

Wall Street loosely means US finance and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE); the Nasdaq is a separate, historically tech-focused exchange.

How do you invest in the Nasdaq?

Through ETFs tracking the Nasdaq-100, also listed in Europe.