Animal Spirits Podcast - Talk Your Book: A Short History of the Nasdaq 100
Episode Date: February 17, 2025On this episode of Animal Spirits: Talk Your Book, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are joined by Emily Spurling, SVP, Global Head of Index at Nasdaq and Mark Marex, Senior Director of Index and Resear...ch and Development to discuss the original inception of the Nasdaq 100, understanding tech exposure within the Nasdaq 100, why Nasdaq is winning the listing race, why companies enter and exit the index, thinking about the dot com bubble and the Nasdaq 100, and much more! Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at animalspirits@thecompoundnews.com with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com Past performance is not indicative of future results. The material discussed has been provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal or investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security or strategy. The investment strategy and themes discussed herein may be unsuitable for investors depending on their specific investment objectives and financial situation. Information obtained from third-party sources is believed to be reliable though its accuracy is not guaranteed. Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Today's Animal Spirits Talk Your Book is brought to you by NASDAQ.
Go to Nasdaq.com to learn more about the NASDAQ 100, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, all the other different products and indexes that NASDAQ offers.
NASDAQ.com to learn more.
Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing.
Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching.
All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Redhol's wealth.
wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon
for any investment decisions. Clients of Bridthold's wealth management may maintain positions
in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben.
Michael, I feel like the Dow is still the only index where you talk in terms of points,
right? The Dow is up 500 points or is down 500 points. You don't really talk about the
S&P or the NASDAQ 100 in terms of points.
Let's look at the NASDAQ 100.
It topped out at about 4,500 in 1999, early 2000 for the dot-com boom and bust.
It bottomed in the 800s, call it, in March 2009.
So pretty big fall.
It is now, it reached in December the highest level ever of just over 22,000.
It's in 21,000's now.
So 800-ish to over 21,000 since the dot-com or since the great financial crisis ended.
not a bad run and it's become one of the preeminent benchmarks that there is and dare I say
a core holding for many investors these days so we spoke on the show like when did this happen
there's not like a there's not a moment in time maybe there is it not as far as as I could tell
but if if you could say like okay when did when did Jim Kramer start opening his show because I'm
I think when I used to watch Kramer it was like the Dow did this the SP did this and the NASDAQ did
that. But there's definitely a point in time in which the NASDAQ entered the chat. You know what I mean?
It entered the chat. I think that it kicked the door down in the 2020s for sure.
I'm just saying like specifically on his show. But yes, in a broader sense, there, so like back in
the day, people would say, if they were like going to index, you would say, why would I just own the
S&P? And now there, it's nothing to hear people say, why wouldn't I just own the NASDAQ, the NASDAQ,
the NASDAQ. Yes. Again, it's become a core. And I think some people probably do a little bit of both to
say, I'm going to own the S&P or the total stock market, whatever, and we're going to own the
NASDAQ to get more concentration in these bigger tech names. So it's the 40th anniversary of the
NASDAQ 100 this year. So we talked to Emily Sperling, who's an SVP and Global Head of Index at
NASDAQ and Mark Merrick, who is a senior director at Index Research and Development, and they
kind of gave us a lot of the background on the index. I think my one big takeaway here that
you and I have been talking about a lot, and I didn't realize the numbers. So he was saying,
The NASDAQ 100 was something like 15% of the S&P in 1999.
So it was much smaller companies, right?
It was more immature.
These companies are still up and coming,
and now it's like 50% of the index or something.
And it makes more sense that things are just more mature
in that space now than they were.
And so anyone predicting a dot-com like crash,
I think has to contend with that reality,
that these are not the same types of,
companies. Things are far more mature and high quality than they were in the past. So anyway,
we learned a lot. We talked a lot about the NASDAQ 100. It's history. Some counterintuitive things
we may not know. So here's our talk with Emily and Mark from NASDAQ. Mark and Emily, welcome to the
show. So 40th anniversary for the NASDAQ 100 feels kind of monumental as a birthday. What was the
impetus for starting this index in the first place that now has become sort of a household name for
investors? The NASDAQ 100 is originally constructed to represent those companies that choose to list
on NASDAQ. It's unique in its construction compared to other market-based indexes out there
because it is, it's kind of simple in its rules. And why 40 years is important and the evolution of
this index is so significant is because it's become so much more than that. So the essence of the
index is more about the companies that choose to list with us and what they represent.
And they really represent growth, forward thinking, mindsets, and disrupting their respective
markets in what they're trying to achieve to drive the future economy.
So it's really at this point, a benchmark of the 21st century.
What was the thinking behind non-financials at the time?
So, funny, the reason why we created this index is because we were creating.
an index of the top 100 financial companies listed on NASDAQ 40 years ago.
So this is actually its kind of sister index that has taken on a life of its own
in terms of why it was originally created.
So Wall Street punditry, whenever they're talking about like the NASDAQ 100 on financial TV,
they always say the tech-heavy NASDAQ.
And it is true.
It is very much a tech-heavy index.
But I think some people would be really surprised to see some of the holdings in here that have
nothing to do with the semiconductors and the AI stuff of the world.
Was that like a new rule or something?
Like, when did that happen?
Yeah.
So, I mean, look, the only sector-based rules around this index have been the
financials exclusion since it was launched.
So that's sort of just a quirk of history.
When we launched the index in 1985, tech as a sector was just not that big yet in the U.S.
So when you look at the exposure back then in 1985, about a quarter.
quarter the index was tech. 20% was consumer services. By 1995, that had already shot up to
over 50% tech. And we've kind of been there ever since. So, you know, was that late 80s,
early mid-90s tech boom, the original internet boom, right, that kind of, I think, led to the
growth of tech as a sector generally, led to a ton of tech listings at NASDAQ. And we've been at
around 50 to 60% tech for the index, depending on what system you use.
for about 30 years now. So it is tech heavy. There's no way around it, but we prefer using
the moniker new economy index. When you take together the companies that are in sort of traditional
tech plus consumer discretionary, which includes names like Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, plus healthcare,
which for us at NASDAQ is almost all biotechs that list on NASDAQ and are in the health care
sector, those three together give you about 80 to 85% of the index exposure.
any given quarter, any given year.
And so making it onto the list is, it's really not that hard.
It's not like you have to jump through a bunch of hoops.
It's basically you're listed on the NASDAQ and you become one of the biggest companies
because this is a market cap weighted index, correct?
As long as you are a non-financial company.
Right. Okay.
So what are some of the companies that are in here that would surprise some people?
Like, what is a NASDAQ100 company that people go, oh, really?
I didn't realize that's a blue chip or that's, like what are those companies?
Pepsi?
Is Pepsi? Isn't Pepsi in there or no?
Pepsi's in there. Pepsi is one of those companies that switched over to NASDAQ around a decade ago from the New York Stock Exchange. And we've had a number of those switches in recent years. Honeywell is another good example. Companies that I think they've looked at the history of the index and they've said, look, we want in.
Right. Maybe we're not tech, but we want to be sort of thought of as being innovative and pioneering and groundbreaking within our actual.
sectors that we operate in. So that's become part of a signaling mechanism to some of these other
companies that have come in either from switching their listing or just deciding to list on NASDAQ
over the years and wanting to be part of that elite sort of innovative flock of companies that have
been here. So Mark, you talked about how some companies will list on NASDAQ because it's almost
like a brand awareness thing. How big of a part of the decision is that for wanting to be at least
perceived as one of these forward-looking companies when a company decides which exchange to
list on? I mean, probably folks from our listings business would be best to answer that, but I'll
give it a crack, right? Which is that, you know, even looking at a company like GE, which split
itself up a couple of years ago into multiple spinoffs, right? They decided to have their health care
focus spinoff, GE Health Care, list on NASDAQ. I think it's another example of
When you look at the history, right, and at this point, we're up to eight largest companies in the U.S., I think eight largest companies globally, are all NASDAQ listed.
They're all part of the NASDAQ 100.
Basically take MAG7 plus Broadcom.
We call them the NDX mega caps.
They're all over a trillion in market cap.
So I want you to do this kind of mental exercise of thinking, okay, if over the past decades, you are one of these companies and your decision to list on NASDAQ versus NIZ is a real.
random process, it's a coin flip. What are the odds that you get eight heads in a row over the
course of four decades and you get all eight of these companies ending up on NASDAQ? The odds are
50% for any one decision, but to get eight heads in a row, it's less than 0.5% probability.
So to us, that means it's not completely random. There is something going behind the scenes here
in terms of companies saying, look, we want not just the historic association with the ones that
have done really well, right? Like you had Apple in 1980, Microsoft in 86, Intel, the first one
to kick this whole trend off in 1971 when NASDAQ was founded. But they want the ongoing
association with, okay, most of where the really exciting IPOs are happening in the new economy
sectors these days, tech and healthcare and consumer, they are happening at NASDAQ. So they
want that association. So like there is something very Wall Street iconic about
being at the New York Stock Exchange ringing the bell.
But to your point, Mark, like undoubtedly, and I want to hear from you, like, how did this happen?
How did you take the crown from the king?
Because you're right.
All of these companies that are listed on the NASDAQ, it's not an accident.
There was something that you all did, whether it's brand awareness or actual tech or distribution
or whatever.
How did you do it?
I think it started with, you know, 1971 when we were founded, first fully electronic.
stock market in the world, which is kind of a watershed moment for equity trading, right?
You didn't have traders yelling out buys and sales in a pit for once.
That's when Intel decided to IPO.
And I think that they really kicked off that trend of saying, we want to list at a venue
that is itself technologically forward thinking and innovative and disruptive.
And I think you can draw kind of a straight line from that over time.
And I'm sure folks, you know, on the marketing side, on the leadership side of NASDAQ have played on that over the past decades.
Emily, what do you think?
What do you think is the secret sauce to NASDAQ winning the listings race year and year out?
Absolutely.
The brand association of NASDAQ and what we represent, if you go back to what Mark was saying,
us being the original disruptors of the markets because we employ technology, because we're innovative and growth oriented.
And then Intel choosing to list with us almost immediately.
thereafter, it's set the stage for a brand embodiment that other people want to associate
themselves with. And they get a boost or a benefit from that. Both the brand association and
now, given the growth of the asset under management, the track the NASDAQ 100 and products linked
to the NASDAQ 100, when you list with us, you have passive capital immediately into your
cap table if you're a part of the NASDAQ 100, which is only.
only available to you if you list on NASDAQ.
One of my favorite aspects, it's so simple, yet I think such a powerful force of market
cap weighted indexes is that you get the cream rises to the top and you have these big
companies that the winners end up being the biggest company.
Like, I looked in, and Nvidia wasn't in the top 10 of the NASDAQ 100, heading into the
pandemic.
And now it's the first or second biggest company, right, depending on which day you're looking at.
And it's because it's this market cap weighted style, it rose the top.
So what happens with smaller companies, though, out of the 100 stocks?
Is it a once a year reconstitution when these smaller companies come up and become one of the bigger stocks?
Does it happen automatically on a more regular basis?
How does that happen when a new stock comes in and old stock drops out?
Yeah.
So, I mean, the official index methodology includes an annual reconstitution.
That process happens every December in line with a ton of other indexes that reconstitute in December every year.
And that process is based on, okay, you're screening everyone that's listed on the NASDAQ exchange, you're excluding financials, you're ranking to see the top 100 based on what the market caps are as of end of November that year, right?
And then there are some nuances baked into the methodology that prevent excessive turnover year over year.
I don't know that we need to get into the details here, but pretty much, right, if you are in the top 100,
as you get towards the end of each year, those are the companies that will make it in.
Now, outside of that, you can have companies leave the index entry year.
You could have an acquisition.
You can have a company switch its listing over to NISI, which we've seen a few times over the years.
You could also have, if a company drops below 0.1% of the index weight, two month ends in a row,
and you saw some of this during COVID when a few companies got hit really hard in the travel sector,
that is a criterion for getting booted out of the index.
And since we always want to have 100 companies,
you'll get replaced right away by whoever is sort of next in line waiting to come in.
So you do see some of those intra-year additions and deletions,
but most of the activity you'll see in December.
And Mark, maybe two things to add there.
One, the fluctuation of the weighting happens every day
based on the price of every stock within the index.
So you can see stocks in the index like Navidia over the course of a year the percentage
waiting that they take up changes based on their actual price value as well.
And then secondly, Mark mentioned that companies move from NASDAQ to NIZE,
but importantly, companies move from NIZE to NASDAQ.
And we just recently hit the 500th switch from NIZE to NASDAQ in 2024,
which was an exciting milestone for us as an exchange as well.
So an exciting little rivalry between you and them, but also it, I remember like probably 10 years ago, Josh said that like the NASDAQ is, is becoming the new SMP 500.
And I don't know that I took that seriously at the time, but like incredibly, it does seem like you guys and not like, not like recently, but like you've, you're in the conversation as one of the preeminent benchmarks in the world.
And that definitely wasn't always the case.
Absolutely.
I think there's differentiation between what the S&P 500 is and what the NASDAQ 100 is.
I mean, importantly, the NASDAQ 100 represents companies only listed on NASDAQ.
So the SMP 500 is largely a broad-based market index.
The NASDAQ 100 has become a preeminent large-cap growth representation.
So we've kind of taken on this piece of the portfolio or we belong in somebody's portfolio
as a large-cap growth product, which has been an evolution.
And I'd say that's kind of driven by the companies that are within the NASDAQ 100 and also the force behind it in terms of the products that are tracking it.
And we've brought this index from just being available or listed in the U.S.
to now having 80 or so products listed outside of the U.S. as well.
So investors globally want access to these companies and the brand and the kind of large cap growth representation that our index has,
or even the representation of a new economy that Mark mentioned, is really attractive to a whole
set of investors and growing.
As far as the rules and regulations are concerned when it comes to indexes, how often do you hear
from fund providers or people who are using this index to track about concentration?
Because that's something that people have been talking about, it seems like this entire decade,
maybe even longer, is just the concern about the U.S. stock market being too concentrated at the top.
And if you look at the NASDAQ 100, I want to say it's, don't quote me if I'm wrong,
50% or so in the top 10 names now because it is, because those Mag 7 names are so big,
are there ever any rules and regulations that you bump up against because of that
concentration? Or is that, as far as you're concerned, that nothing you have to deal with?
That absolutely is something that we deal with and we make it a priority because we want our
products to be investable. So we actually, the rules that are baked into our methodology account
for some of the regulatory rules that would be around concentration within the index.
And Mark, I don't know if you want to elaborate on anything there.
Yeah.
So this goes back to the earlier point about how the index methodology is fairly nuanced.
It's about 10 pages long.
The overall kind of overarching idea is very simple, right?
Give me the 100 largest on the exchange, X financials.
We do have a whole slew of capping processes in place.
Some are quarterly.
Some are annual to make sure that a single constituent doesn't get too big.
as well as to make sure that the biggest holdings in aggregate don't get too big.
So we cap the biggest holdings down every single quarter.
If you're over, you know, a 20% of the index weight, you get capped down.
If as a group, the names that are over 4.5% weight each exceed 48% as a group,
those get capped down to 40% every quarter.
And that's what happened in July 2020, when we have that special rebalance, we just missed that
condition at the end of the second quarter.
And because the mega caps were doing so well in that first half of the year led by NVIDIA,
we ended up breaching that condition and having to do a special rebalance in July.
So when you look at historically the concentration across the top 10, these days it's actually
not that out of sync with what you've seen, like going back.
back to 2010, 2011, 2012, when Apple was over 20% of the index weight at times, they were sort of
far and away, the biggest mega cap company. You saw 50, 55, close to 60% of the index weight was
across those top 10. And you've seen that pretty consistently for the last 10 years or so.
And they're just regularly sort of getting capped down as a group, if not quarterly, then
annually when we have that capping process run.
Are there any rules on how old a company needs to be before it's included?
The IPO window has been sealed pretty tight for the past couple of years, but there's
some optimism that we might see some new issuance from large companies that ostensibly
will choose the NASDAQ as our listing place.
So what would happen in the event that we get a mega-cap company going public on the NASDAQ?
Would that automatically enter the index or how does that work?
So that happens on the NASDAQ composite because there are minimal rules on that one.
But for the NASDAQ 100 and most other indexes that we have, you need three months of trading.
You need a three-month seasoning requirement before you get added to the index.
And that's it?
So after three months, we're going to see some of these names if they ever come public?
Well, they're seasoned at that point.
But then there has to be a moment for them to be added.
So it either has to be the reconstitution that happens in December or something like what Mark
talked about where a company drops out, D-LIS, or is acquired.
and then there's an opening for another company to come in.
So it's, you know, it's seasoning plus moment in time to be added.
I think one of the other cool aspects of the NASDAQ 100 in your history here
is just the cycles that investors have lived through with this index.
And it seems like, I don't know if the S&P 500 on steroids is fair or what,
but, I mean, you know, the 80s things took off and then really ramped up in the 90s
as, you know, as this thing became much bigger.
and then you had the dot-com bubble burst, and then there was a massive crash, and then coming out
of the dot-com bubble and into the 2010s, you've had this huge upswing again.
So it seems like the cycles are amplified, and I think the way that we explain this as
advisors to clients is just if you want higher returns, you're going to have to accept more
volatility or higher bigger drawdowns or whatever it is, no pain, no gain.
I'm just curious how you've thought about the evolution of this over this time period
where you've had these huge swings from booms to busts and everything in between.
I would phrase it a little bit differently, Ben.
I would first point out that, you know, and this goes back to the Josh comment you mentioned earlier,
I would first point out that turn of the century, this index was about 10 to 15% of U.S. equity market cap.
Last couple of years, it's been around 50%.
So, yes, it may have been.
more amplified in the past and certainly more concentrated in the past in terms of earlier stage
companies in the tech and tech adjacent sectors. But nowadays, given the fact that you have
this anchor, right, with the eight largest companies, top 10 around 50 percent, these are not
young, unproven companies. They actually represent most of the fundamental growth that you'd
seen in the S&P 500 over the last few years.
So to us, when we think about positioning it to our clients and our audiences, we kind of
challenged them to think about it as well, what is the rest of the S&P 500 giving you?
There's about 80 to 85 companies that are common between the two indexes.
And when you look at the companies that have been driving, the growth in revenues, earnings,
dividends, buybacks, cash flow, all that over the last decade, decade and a half,
that's disproportionately come from this index, not those other 420 companies in the U.S.
So if you want to...
I was going to say that's a really good point because part of the reason, to your point,
that why there was such a big crash from the dot-com bubble blowing up is because those
companies were more immature, right?
And now they're much more...
And Michael and I talk about this all the time that you never say never when it comes
to the stock market.
Sure, there could be a crash like that again, but it's hard to believe with the quality
of these companies and the cash flows.
that they produce and how important they are in our lives, that's an interesting set.
I didn't realize, so you're saying 15% in like 1999 of the S&P was a NASDAQ 100.
Now it's more like 50% or whatever.
That's very interesting.
By market cap, yeah.
I would also say the median size of a company back when this index was first launched was
$450 or so million, and the median size today is $74 billion.
So the companies within the index are just very different than they were back when it was launched
or even from the early 2000s, largely different in terms of the cash flows that they generated,
like you mentioned, their debt-to-ebit-da ratios, the different drivers of success for the
companies themselves have changed.
So that trade-off between returns and volatility is more subdued than it was in the early
2000s.
One of the big themes in markets over the past couple years, especially in 2024, with the advent of the
ETF has been, has been crypto.
Are there any, like, exclusionary items that would prevent a, like, is coin based in the NASCAR 100,
for example?
It is not.
It is a financials company as per the sector classification system that we use.
So, they must not be happy with that exclusion.
I mean, I'm sure they're like, we're a technology company.
We are not the ones who determine the classifications.
We use the ICB, which is produced by, by Futsi Russell.
All right.
So they could take it up.
somebody else. But there's no, but other than that, it's like you guys aren't like
anti any particular industry other than, of course, it's not a, you know, there's no financials
in the index, but it's outside of that. You've got PayPal in there, right? PayPal's still
classified as an industrial company because there's sort of a payment infrastructure arena,
right? So PayPal has a decent crypto business. They let you buy and sell a bunch of crypto on
there now. You've got micro strategy. PayPal's considered an industrial for now at,
least, yes. It's still considered investment. So micro strategy is listed is, is classified as
what? It's a tech company. They've been a tech company for like 30 years. If you look at
their revenue, right, how they make revenue, it's from software. It's from data visualization
type software and other things. So for now, they're tech and they are in. Yes, again,
the classification is based on ICB, rather than anything arbitrary from NASDAQ.
That is interesting. I never knew the non-financial piece.
So it seems like in that dot-com boom that I was talking about, a lot of people probably
mentioned the NASAC composite.
You guys are on the same team, obviously.
But when do you think that the NASDAQ 100 really, like, firmly and became like kind
of the head of the class or whatever versus the NASDAQ composite being that piece
because it seems like the NASDAQ 100, the brand at least, has usurped that?
Like when did that happen?
Is that just this latest cycle?
No way.
I'll answer for you guys.
But like, I, so I started, well, let's say my official starting date in this industry is 2012.
My prior years, I don't think that counts.
So 2012, when I was like entering the ticker for the index, at least, I was always NDX.
I was never comp or comp or whatever.
So I feel like it's been that way for a while, no?
They are just fundamentally very different.
You know, the NASDAG 100 is 100 of the largest non-financial stocks.
It represents something.
the composite is every, every company that lists on NASDAQ.
And by the way, it is one team.
The index business is one team.
So all indexes provided in the market by NASDAQ is under the same roof.
How many companies in the NASDAQ composite then that you take these 100 out of?
Like, what's the total number on the NASDAQ overall ballpark?
I believe it's around 4,000.
So one of the big fund industries that has grown, I think pretty much this decade, is thematics.
and I think it was really when Kathy Wood and Arc came into play, the big one was like,
all right, everyone needs their own innovation fund.
And there was a lot of these funds and indexes created to, all right, here's our way of looking at innovation.
And we've seen in recent years that the way that you define innovation can really impact your returns.
And some places that people that are looking for innovation in certain places, vastly underperformed,
other places that were outperforming.
And that's certainly been sped up by AI and all these things.
how do you view that term and how do you go about defining it yeah sure so so for us we're
constantly trying to quantify what innovation means for the NASDAQ 100 and we talk about it as
an innovation centric or an innovation overweight index and there's a few ways that you can do that
with data pretty easily right research and development expense publicly available reported line
item on the income statement, which we track quarter to quarter, and which we can see when
you take a look at the data that the companies in the NASDAQ 100 spend around an order of
magnitude more on R&D versus the rest of the U.S. large cap universe. When you do it based on
sort of average billions amount per company spent every year, or even when you normalize it and
you say, okay, give me R&D as a percent of total sales, total revenue, it's around an order of
magnitude, higher intensity on R&D in the NASDAQ 100 versus rest of the S&P, rest of, you know,
whatever benchmark you use to get U.S. large cap exposure.
We dig into that even further, though, to kind of reinforce that story and say, okay,
what's all this R&D spending leading to, ultimately?
A lot of it is leading to patent filings.
So we have access to data sets at NASDAQ because we have data businesses housed within NASDAQ
that sells some of this data to hedge funds, to institutional and other investors, we use some of
this data to build some of our own thematic indexes around patent valuations, right?
How do you estimate the value of a company's patent portfolio or patent classifications?
Can you actually tell me, of all the patents that Google filed last year, which ones related to
AI?
We have access to that data.
And we can see sort of year in and year out the concentration of patent filings that this index gives
you versus rest of U.S., rest of the world, to the point where for some of these AI technologies
like natural language processing, image recognition, deep learning, we've seen in recent years
20, 30, 40, even as much as 50% of the global patent activity comes from NASDAQ 100 companies.
So to us, it's not just sort of a buzzword of like, yeah, we think these companies have
been innovative because they're coming up with new products, new services.
that's all very important as part of the definition,
but it also comes back to hard data and hard numbers around,
is this leading to something that you can quantify
and use to predict where the next technological revolution is going to come from?
All right.
So, Emily, what is your year-end price target for the NASDAQ 100?
I'm only kidding.
Well, I think you guys are on to something with the NASDAQ 100.
It could be big someday.
So for people that want to learn more about the 100
or some of your other products, where do we send them?
You could send that, what do you think, Mark?
You send them to NASDAQ.com.
NASDAQ.com.
You'll find it there.
All right.
Mark, Emily, thank you very much for the time today.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Pleasure to be here.
Thanks again to Emily, Mark.
Remember check out NASDAQ.com.
Do one more.
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