Quinn Waller at Daily Upside covered State Street's new Nasdaq-100 ETF, QNDX, which charges 10 basis points against 18 for Invesco's QQQ, the fund that owned that index for decades. BlackRock filed a competing product a day apart, and the industry was waiting to see where fees would land.
My reaction: QNDX at 10 basis points is not just competitive, it is aggressive. For a long-term holder the difference between 18 and 10 basis points is small in any single year and meaningful over 20, and the underlying exposure is identical. Invesco keeps first-mover advantages, liquidity and options depth among them, but for a buy-and-hold investor who is not trading options around the position, cost is the deciding variable.
I shared a client story. She had been invested in QQQ since 2017 and had never once asked about fees. Then SpaceX changed that. She came in asking about the Nasdaq-100 because of the IPO, and we ended up in a conversation about what she was paying for the exposure she already had. The new fund gave us a cheaper way to own the same thing.
Competition on fees is good for investors. The right response is not to chase every new launch, but to check, once a year, whether the fund you own is still the cheapest way to own what you want.
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