New money goes to QQQM. A taxable QQQ holding can stay.
They hold the same Nasdaq-100 stocks, with the Invesco NASDAQ 100 ETF at 0.15% and the Invesco QQQ Trust at 0.18%, and the options market is what would send new money to the trust.
Key takeaways
New money goes to the Invesco NASDAQ 100 ETF, QQQM, not the Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1, QQQ.
QQQM charges 0.15% and QQQ charges 0.18%, so the same stocks cost $3 a year less on every $10,000.
Keep QQQ if you trade its options. A taxable holding can stay when the gain is large. In a retirement account, the shares belong in QQQM.
Same stocks, close results
Both track the Nasdaq-100 Index, 100 of the largest companies listed on Nasdaq other than financials. The gap between the funds is not a gap between indexes.
They hold the same stocks at the same weights. Nvidia is 8.27% of each.
QQQ has traded since March 10, 1999, and QQQM since Oct. 13, 2020. Over the years both have existed, the results are close.
Through Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, the five-year price returns are 92.15% for QQQ and 92.53% for QQQM. From QQQM's first close on Oct. 13, 2020, they are 139.19% and 139.68%.
QQQM is ahead in both windows, by less than half a percentage point.
Price returns leave out dividends. The last four quarterly dividends add up to 0.44% of QQQ's Thursday price and 0.45% of QQQM's, so the income does not put QQQ ahead.
On Dec. 22, 2025, Invesco cut QQQ's fee from 0.20% to 0.18%. From that day's close through Thursday, the price returns are 13.77% for QQQ and 13.81% for QQQM.
QQQ is the one you trade
QQQ holds $489.6 billion and, over the 20 sessions through Thursday, traded $25.9 billion a day. QQQM holds $109.9 billion and traded $844 million a day. QQQ's dollar volume is 30.7 times larger.
QQQ trades 30.7 times QQQM's dollar volume
An options contract covers 100 shares. At Thursday's close, that is $70,447 of QQQ and $29,013 of QQQM.
U.S. News wrote in an Aug. 3, 2026 update that QQQ options expire every weekday the market is open, and that QQQM options are very limited.
If you trade the options, or you buy and sell in large amounts, pay the higher fee and use QQQ. If you are holding the index, you would be paying for a market you do not use.
Selling now pays the tax sooner
On a $100,000 holding, the fee gap is $30 a year. Ten years of that is $300.
Selling to save the $30 can mean tax on profit already in the shares. If you would have sold later, you pay that tax now instead of then.
The shares you buy start at today's price, so you do not pay tax on that same profit a second time. You give up what that tax money would have earned until the later sale, not the tax itself.
A tax around $300 is a decade of the gap, and you are not giving up all of it. That is not a reason to stay.
A tax of $1,500 is five times a decade of the gap. That is a reason to stay if you are years from selling.
In a retirement account, the sale is not taxed, so the holding belongs in QQQM. The same is true if the shares are worth less than you paid, or if you were going to sell now and reinvest.
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