If I Were in My 20s, I'd Buy This Spectacular Nasdaq-100 Index Fund and Hold It Forever

The Nasdaq is often the stock exchange of choice for small technology companies looking to go public, because it offers lower fees and fewer compliance barriers compared to alternatives like the New York Stock Exchange. Over the last few decades, many of those budding companies have become trillion-dollar giants, which now feature in the Nasdaq-100 .

The Nasdaq-100 is an index of the 100 largest companies listed on the Nasdaq, excluding banks and financial institutions. Over 65% of the value of its entire portfolio is parked in the high-growth technology sector, which is why it usually outperforms the more diversified S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) index.

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Higher returns typically come with higher volatility, but that might be a worthwhile trade-off for younger investors, because it can lead to a much stronger financial position later in life. If I were in my 20s, here's why I'd buy the Invesco QQQ ETF (NASDAQ: QQQ), which mimics the Nasdaq-100, and hold it forever.

America's best high-growth tech stocks in one ETF

The technology sector has consistently led the broader stock market higher over the last two decades, thanks to the incredible growth in areas like semiconductors, smartphones, cloud computing, enterprise software, and artificial intelligence (AI). All of the companies that make up the top 10 holdings in the Invesco QQQ ETF are laser-focused on AI right now, whether they are designing chips, building models, or developing software.

Data source: Invesco. Portfolio weightings are accurate as of Aug. 31, 2026, and are subject to change.

There is currently a global shortage of the specialized data center chips and components required to process AI training and inference workloads, because semiconductor suppliers simply can't produce them fast enough to meet the significant demand. Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) are the world's best AI data center chips, but AMD is quickly catching up from a technological perspective.

High bandwidth memory (HBM) keeps data flowing smoothly to GPUs to accelerate processing speeds and minimize bottlenecks. It's a red-hot commodity right now, which is benefiting Micron, one of the industry's top suppliers. The company's soaring revenue and earnings growth have sent its stock rocketing higher by 700% over the past year alone.