Tracks the Nasdaq-100. Heavily weighted to technology.
Prices as of 2026-10-23. Source: Data via FinanceDataReader · Policy rate via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
QQQ is Invesco's Nasdaq-100 ETF, launched in March 1999. It follows, without leverage, the same index TQQQ tracks at 3x, which makes it a natural baseline for judging the leveraged version.
Right after launch the dot-com bubble burst and it fell more than 80% between March 2000 and October 2002; regaining that high took well over a decade. Today it reads as the index of large tech that kept climbing, but leaving out those first fifteen years changes the conclusion a lot. When this site reconstructs TQQQ before its listing, it uses QQQ's daily returns from March 1999.
A 1x fund moves little in a day, so split-buying triggers fire rarely and take-profit targets take a long time to reach. Running the same strategy on TQQQ and QQQ side by side separates what leverage contributes from what the index does. That comparison is in how many times did 3x funds really deliver.
Using real closing prices only (adjusted for splits and dividends) from 1999-03-10, QQQ's worst peak-to-trough fall was -83.0%, from the 2000-03-27 high to the 2002-10-09 low over 636 trading days. It took another 3501 trading days (about 13.9 years) to get back above that high, on 2016-09-06. The last close is 7.3% below the all-time high.
A fall of 83.0% needs a 487% gain to get back to even. Any strategy on QQQ has to be judged on whether you could have held it through a stretch like this. Why drawdown comes before return.
The standard deviation of daily returns is 1.69% over the whole history
and 1.26% over the last year. By the rough rule
days ≈ (target ÷ daily volatility)², a 1.5% take-profit target needs about
1.4 trading days at the recent pace.
Where the rule comes from.
Three preset strategies run over 2016-01-04 to 2026-10-23 with a $10,000 seed and 0.1% fees, alongside simply holding the same instrument.
| Strategy | Return | Max drawdown | CAGR | Trades | Win rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A2 Standard, base rules (no defence signal) | +137.39% | -12.10% | +8.35% | 1166 | 59.6% |
| A1 Defensive, base rules | +62.76% | -6.19% | +4.62% | 1173 | 85.5% |
| A3 Aggressive, base rules (no defence signal) | +146.66% | -17.61% | +8.73% | 1033 | 56.4% |
| Buy and hold | +540.62% | -35.59% | +18.80% | - | - |
Read the drawdown column before the return column. Split buying leaves much of the seed in cash, which is the main reason its drawdown is smaller — treat it as lower exposure rather than protection.
Test QQQ with your own settings →The standard (diamond) preset, one calendar year at a time. A strategy worth using should have good years and bad years mixed — if one year made everything, that was the year, not the rules.
| Year | Strategy | Strategy MDD | Buy and hold | B&H MDD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | +3.65% | -6.89% | +14.62% | -11.80% |
| 2025 | +12.63% | -11.96% | +20.08% | -22.80% |
| 2024 | +10.95% | -7.48% | +26.66% | -13.53% |
| 2023 | +8.70% | -9.20% | +54.50% | -10.90% |
| 2022 | +5.17% | -8.63% | -33.68% | -35.20% |
| 2021 | +8.59% | -7.28% | +28.33% | -10.84% |
| 2020 | +11.24% | -11.39% | +44.64% | -28.44% |
| 2019 | +6.76% | -9.65% | +37.00% | -10.98% |
| 2018 | -2.34% | -9.82% | -2.86% | -23.15% |
| 2017 | +10.41% | -3.10% | +29.83% | -5.11% |
Across these 10 years the strategy beat buy and hold in 2 and trailed it in 8. It lost money in 1 year; buy and hold lost in 2. In QQQ's worst year here, 2022, holding returned -33.7% while the strategy returned +5.2%. In its best year, 2023, holding returned +54.5% and the strategy +8.7%. Giving up much of the best years is the price of the smaller drawdowns.
QQQ listed on 1999-03-10, and every number on this page uses real prices only. In the backtest tool you can go back to 1993, but the years before listing are index-based: QQQ listed on 1999-03-10. Prices from 1993-01-01 to the day before listing are converted from the 1x index, not real trades: the daily return of Nasdaq-100 Index (^NDX) minus the fund fee. Treat that range as an estimate. See how the index-based history is built and checked.
Whole shares only. If a tranche is allocated less than one share's price, it buys nothing. Raise the seed or lower the number of tranches.
The Today's Orders page computes the next session's buy limit and each tranche's sell target from your start date. It is a calculation, not advice, and no orders are placed.