QQQ vs VOO: $10K Backtest Exposed a 20-Year Myth (2026)

QQQ vs VOO is the wrong question — unless you specify which decade you’re asking about.

Over the last 10 years, QQQ turned $10,000 into $59,152. VOO turned it into $39,833. A $19,319 gap. Seems obvious. But stretch the clock back to January 2000, and VOO was beating QQQ for 20 straight years. The Nasdaq-100 didn’t overtake the S&P 500 on a cumulative basis until the 2020 tech rally — two full decades after the dot-com crash.

The answer to “QQQ or VOO?” changes completely depending on your starting point. So instead of picking a convenient time window, we’re breaking this comparison down decade by decade — and letting you choose which history rhymes with today. For a deeper look at each fund on its own, see our QQQ ETF Review and VOO ETF Review.

The 2000s: Tech’s Lost Decade

The Nasdaq-100 entered the year 2000 at its all-time high — and then fell off a cliff. Three consecutive years of destruction: down 36% in 2000, down 33% in 2001, down 37% in 2002. A $10,000 investment in QQQ at the peak was worth roughly $2,670 by the end of 2002. That’s a 73% loss.

VOO dropped too — 9%, 12%, and 22% in those same years — but a $10,000 investment was still worth about $6,200. More than double what QQQ holders had left.

It took QQQ until roughly 2013 — thirteen years — just to claw back to its January 2000 level. And even after breaking even, QQQ’s cumulative return still lagged VOO. Anyone who invested a lump sum in QQQ at the wrong moment waited over a decade just to stop losing money.

This is the chapter of the QQQ vs VOO story that gets conveniently left out of most comparisons. The 2000s were catastrophic enough to define an entire generation of investor behavior.

The 2010s: The Comeback Nobody Saw Coming

Starting around 2010, something shifted. Smartphones became ubiquitous. Cloud computing matured. The FAANG stocks — Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google — grew from large companies into dominant platforms. QQQ went from a cautionary tale to the best-performing major ETF on the planet.

From 2010 through 2019, QQQ compounded at roughly 18.5% annualized. VOO returned about 13.5%. The gap widened every year. By the end of the decade, QQQ had more than quintupled in value while VOO roughly tripled.

The critical detail: even with this dominance, QQQ’s cumulative return measured from January 2000 still hadn’t caught VOO. The hole from the dot-com bust was that deep. The 2010s were incredible for QQQ — and they still weren’t enough to erase the 2000s.

The 2020s: AI Rewrites the Scoreboard

Then 2020 happened. QQQ returned 48.6% in a single year — more than doubling VOO’s 18.4%. This was the year QQQ finally overtook VOO on a cumulative basis from the 2000 starting point, after trailing for two full decades.

The momentum carried into 2023 (QQQ +54.9% vs VOO +26.3%) as the AI boom sent NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Meta to record valuations. But 2022 provided a reminder of the downside: QQQ dropped 32.6% while VOO fell 18.1%. The pattern held — bigger highs, bigger drops.

Over the full 26-year span from January 2000, the cumulative QQQ vs VOO gap is surprisingly narrow: $79,660 vs $75,285 on an initial $10,000. QQQ barely wins by $4,375. All those fireworks — the crashes, the comebacks, the AI explosion — produced a gap of about 6% over more than a quarter century.

QQQ vs VOO: Interactive Backtest Comparison

The chart below lets you toggle between time windows and see exactly where each fund led — and where it lagged. Pay close attention to the drawdown section at the bottom.

Year-by-Year Total Returns: Where the Gap Lives

Averages hide the pain. The table below shows what each fund actually delivered every calendar year — and which one won. Notice how the lead swings back and forth, and how wide the gap gets in extreme years.

Total returns include dividends reinvested. Source: Invesco, Yahoo Finance

Scoreboard since 2015: QQQ wins 7 out of 11 years. But the margins tell the real story — QQQ’s wins are explosive (+48.6% in 2020, +55.1% in 2023), while VOO’s wins are narrow (+1.4% in 2021, +5.1% in 2016). The tradeoff is 2022: QQQ’s 32.6% drop was nearly twice VOO’s 18.1% loss. That’s the core of the QQQ vs VOO decision — lopsided upside in exchange for steeper drawdowns.

The $10K Test: When You Start Changes Everything

This is the most revealing table in the entire QQQ vs VOO comparison. Your starting point determines which fund “wins” — and the gap swings from massive to almost nothing.

The contrast is stark. Starting from 2011, QQQ returns nearly double. Starting from 2000 — which includes the dot-com crash — the gap is barely $4,375 after 26 years. A quarter century of dramatically different returns, volatility, and investor experience, producing almost the same final dollar amount.

For perspective on how VOO compares to other popular funds over similar timeframes, see our VTI vs VOO and SCHD vs VOO analyses.

Risk Profile: The Price of QQQ’s Upside

Higher returns always come with a cost. In QQQ’s case, that cost is visible in every risk metric.

Sources: PortfoliosLab, MyPlanIQ

The Sharpe ratios are close — 0.82 vs 0.78 — meaning QQQ does compensate investors somewhat for the extra volatility. But the max drawdown numbers are what matter to real humans holding real portfolios. A 33% drop requires a 49% gain just to break even. An 83% drop? That requires a 488% gain. QQQ delivered both the catastrophic losses and the historic recoveries — but surviving the drawdowns required conviction (or ignorance) that few investors actually maintain.

For a different risk profile entirely — lower volatility with higher income — see how VYM and SCHD compare in the dividend ETF space.

Why the Decade Matters More Than the Ticker

QQQ and VOO aren’t just two market ETFs with different returns. They’re structurally different portfolios that behave in fundamentally different ways during different market regimes.

QQQ is a concentrated growth bet: ~100 stocks, 54% tech, zero financials, zero energy. When the Nasdaq-100 rallies, nothing in the ETF world touches it. When it falls, there’s no cushion. VOO is the full U.S. economy — 500+ stocks across all 11 sectors. When tech crashes, financials and healthcare and energy absorb some of the blow.

That structural difference explains why the QQQ vs VOO winner rotates by decade. Tech-dominated eras reward QQQ. Broader economic cycles reward VOO. And since nobody can predict which regime comes next, the choice is less about “which is better” and more about which risk profile matches your timeline and temperament.

This also means your starting point matters enormously. Someone who began dollar-cost averaging in 2010 saw QQQ dramatically outperform. Someone who invested a lump sum in January 2000 waited 20 years for QQQ to catch VOO.

Tech valuations are elevated today and AI hype is everywhere — that doesn’t guarantee a crash, but it means the sequence-of-returns risk is real. The next decade could look like the 2010s or the 2000s, and nobody gets to choose in advance.

The Overlap Problem: Do You Need Both?

About 80% of QQQ’s holdings already exist inside VOO. NVIDIA, Apple, and Microsoft are the top 3 in both funds. So if you own VOO, you already have significant Nasdaq-100 exposure — and if you hold both, you’re overweighting tech, not diversifying.

If you want true diversification alongside either fund, you’d need assets that move independently: international stocks (VXUS), bonds (BND), or income-focused ETFs like SCHD. Adding QQQ on top of VOO doesn’t accomplish that. The QQQ vs VOO overlap is too high for the combination to count as diversification.

That said, a deliberate 70-80% VOO / 20-30% QQQ split is a legitimate strategy — as long as you understand you’re making a targeted bet on tech outperformance, not adding diversification.

Fees: Real but Dwarfed by Returns

QQQ charges 0.18%. VOO charges 0.03%. Yes, QQQ costs 6× more — but when annual returns can differ by 4-5 percentage points, the 0.15% fee gap is noise. Nobody chooses VOO over QQQ to save $15 per year on a $10,000 investment. In the QQQ vs VOO comparison, performance differences dwarf fee differences.

If you want Nasdaq-100 exposure at a lower cost, QQQM tracks the same index at 0.15%. For a detailed breakdown of how small fee differences compound, use the calculator below.

📈 QQQ vs VOO — Live Price Comparison

Two funds, same top 3 stocks — vastly different sector bets and drawdown profiles.

QQQ vs VOO: What the Decades Tell Us

The bull/bear pattern is structural, not random. QQQ wins big in rallies — 48.6% in 2020, 55.1% in 2023 — because 54% of the fund is tech. But it also loses big in downturns: -32.6% in 2022, -83% in 2000-2002.

You need a 48% gain just to recover from a 32% loss. VOO’s broader sector mix acts as a cushion that limits both the highs and the lows.

The pattern across three decades is clear: QQQ delivers bigger highs and bigger lows, and the gap between these two funds is almost entirely a function of when you start measuring. If the next decade looks like the 2010s, QQQ wins by a wide margin. If it looks like the 2000s, VOO wins by an even wider one.

I run about 80% VOO and 20% QQQ. VOO is the foundation I don’t touch — broad, stable, and easy to ignore. QQQ is targeted growth exposure I’m comfortable holding through a drawdown because it’s a minority position.

Could I earn more going all-in on QQQ? Possibly. But I’ve seen enough decade-by-decade data to know that concentrated bets demand a higher pain tolerance than most people think they have. For more on how QQQ works as a standalone investment, see our QQQ ETF Review. For VOO as a core position, see our VOO ETF Review.

QQQ & VOO Deep Dives

Common Questions About QQQ and VOO