After a breathtaking run over January, the BetaShares Nasdaq 100 ETF (ASX: NDQ) has been taking a bit of a breather of late. BetaShares Nasdaq 100 units rose from $24.60 in late December to $28.32 by 8 February – a gain of more than 13.5% in just over a month.
But since 8 February, investors have cooled off a little on this ASX exchange-traded fund (ETF). As it stands today, the BetaShares Nasdaq ETF is currently at $27.95 per unit, down more than 1.3% from its early February high:
So does this fall in value make the Nasdaq 100 ETF a no-brainer buy for ASX investors today?
Tech, tech and more tech
Well, let's backtrack a little. The BetaShares Nasdaq 100 ETF is an index fund. But it doesn't hold or track ASX shares. Instead, it holds 100 of the largest US shares listed on the American NASDAQ stock exchange. The NASDAQ is known for being the exchange that most tech companies choose to list on.
As such, its largest holdings are the US tech giants we all know and may, or may not, love. These include Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Netflix Inc (NASDAQ: NFLX). Not to mention the likes of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL), Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA), and Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX).
So the performance of the BetaShares Nasdaq ETF largely rides or dies on the performance of these companies.
Some of these names have indeed had a rough February thus far. There was the interesting debacle that was Alphabet's artificial intelligence display last week, which has seen the company lose around 12% of its value over the past week for one.
But Amazon has also seen its share price cool off this month. It's probably these two US tech giants that are responsible for the pullback we have seen in the unit price of the BetaShares Nasdaq 100 ETF.
So this brings us to the question of whether this ETF is in the buy zone today.
Why the BetaShares Nasdaq ETF's pain is our gain
Well, I think it is. An investment in the NASDAQ is an investment in American tech. And American tech has led the way for global innovation over the past two to three decades. I think companies like Apple, Tesla, Netflix, Alphabet, and Amazon will be larger, healthier, more dominant and more profitable in ten years' time than they are today.
I can't see a scenario where a competitor comes in and takes Apple's place at the top of the world's consumer electronics market.
Or dents the incredible market share that Alphabet's Google has in search.
Or Amazon's incredibly dominant e-commerce platform (not to mention its cloud-based AWS division).
An investment in the BetaShares Nasdaq ETF would have been incredibly lucrative ever since this ETF was first listed. Since its inception in 2015, investors have enjoyed an average annual return of 15.65% per annum.
In my view, all of this adds up to a buying opportunity for the BetaShares Nasdaq 100 ETF today.
