Forest Hill's Jeff Judge in The Daily Upside: What the New Nasdaq-100 ETF Means for Harford County Investors

By Jeff Judge, CFP®, AEP®, ChFC®, CLU®, Managing Partner, Chesapeake Financial Planners, Forest Hill, MD.

There is a story playing out in the ETF market right now that matters more than the headline suggests.

State Street just launched a new Nasdaq-100 ETF (QNDX) that charges 10 basis points per year. Invesco's QQQ, which has owned this space for decades, charges 18. That 8-basis-point gap does not sound like much, but on a $500,000 position, it translates to $400 per year. In a tax-deferred retirement account compounded over a decade, that is real money.

Quinn Waller at The Daily Upside quoted me on this for a piece published this week. When a client who had been in QQQ since 2017 came in this spring asking about the Nasdaq-100 for the first time, the conversation was not about performance. It was about the wrapper. SpaceX's IPO reopened the door to that review, and I expect it will keep opening for a while.

For Harford County and Baltimore-metro investors who hold Nasdaq-100 exposure in an IRA or 401(k), this is worth a look. Not because QQQ is a bad fund (it still has the liquidity and options market that institutional traders rely on), but because the reason to choose one Nasdaq-100 vehicle over another may have shifted. Buy-and-hold investors in tax-deferred accounts have the most to gain from comparing costs.

The broader point: the era of one fund company owning a major index wrapper is coming to an end. Competition is driving fees down. That is generally good for investors who know to ask the question.

If you have not reviewed what you are paying inside your holdings lately, this is a reasonable moment to do it.

This piece builds on "State Street Takes on Invesco's QQQ with New Nasdaq-100 ETF," published in The Daily Upside (June 2026)

Jeff Judge, CFP®, AEP®, ChFC®, CLU®, is Managing Partner at Chesapeake Financial Planners in Forest Hill, MD. Book an intro call.