Weight Overlap
32.7% shared by weight
Guardfolio Research · ETF Overlap
SPY vs QQQ: Overlap and Concentration Risk
SPY tracks the S&P 500. QQQ tracks the Nasdaq-100. They sound different — but 9 of QQQ's top 10 holdings are already in SPY's top 10, at higher weights. The pair shares 32.7% overlap by weight. Adding QQQ to a SPY-based portfolio mostly concentrates the same mega-cap names further rather than adding a genuinely different return source.
Shared Top-10 Names
9 of 10 — AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, AMZN, META, GOOGL, GOOG, AVGO, TSLA
Tech Sector
SPY 31.5% → QQQ 51%
Risk Snapshot
ConcentrationHigh
OverlapHigh
CorrelationVery High
DrawdownModerate-High
Read This As
QQQ amplifies the exact names already leading SPY. The pair is not broad market plus growth — it is broad market with the growth component doubled down.
Core Insight
Adding QQQ to SPY adds weight, not breadth
SPY holds 503 stocks. QQQ holds 100. But 9 of QQQ's top 10 holdings are already in SPY's top 10 — with higher weights in QQQ. Adding QQQ to a SPY-based portfolio does not add the rest of the Nasdaq. It concentrates the portfolio further into the same names that are already doing most of the work in SPY. The only name in SPY's top 10 that doesn't appear in QQQ's top 10 is Berkshire Hathaway — everything else overlaps.
Overlap Logic
Why 32.7% overlap matters in practice
SPY tracks the S&P 500 — the 500 largest US companies by market cap. QQQ tracks the Nasdaq-100 — the 100 largest non-financial Nasdaq-listed companies. Because Nasdaq-listed mega-caps are all also S&P 500 components, the overlap concentrates at the very top of both funds. The result: 32.7% of the combined position by weight sits in the same 9 companies.
Technology represents 31.5% of SPY and 51.0% of QQQ. Add the two in equal weight and the effective tech exposure shifts materially toward the QQQ end. Communication services adds another layer — Alphabet and Meta appear in both, and their combined weight in QQQ (around 16%) is significantly higher than in SPY (around 9.5%). The investor who believes they are combining "stable broad market" with "innovation growth" is often combining "tech-heavy" with "even more tech-heavy."
Top Holdings Side by Side
9 of 10 names are identical — QQQ just holds them at higher weights
SPY's only unique top-10 name is Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B). QQQ's only unique top-10 name is Costco (COST). Every other position is shared — with QQQ weighting each shared name significantly higher than SPY.
| # | SPY holding | SPY wt. | QQQ holding | QQQ wt. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AAPL — Apple | 7.0% | AAPL — Apple | 9.0% |
| 2 | MSFT — Microsoft | 6.5% | MSFT — Microsoft | 8.0% |
| 3 | NVDA — Nvidia | 6.0% | NVDA — Nvidia | 7.5% |
| 4 | AMZN — Amazon | 3.7% | AMZN — Amazon | 5.5% |
| 5 | META — Meta | 2.5% | META — Meta | 5.0% |
| 6 | GOOGL — Alphabet A | 2.0% | AVGO — Broadcom | 4.5% |
| 7 | AVGO — Broadcom | 1.8% | GOOG — Alphabet C | 3.2% |
| 8 | GOOG — Alphabet C | 1.7% | GOOGL — Alphabet A | 3.0% |
| 9 | TSLA — Tesla | 1.5% | TSLA — Tesla | 3.0% |
| 10 | BRK.B — Berkshire ✦ SPY only | 1.4% | COST — Costco ✦ QQQ only | 1.8% |
Source: State Street (SPY) · Invesco (QQQ) fund fact sheets · Holdings as of Q1 2026
Sector Breakdown
SPY is diversified. QQQ is tech-concentrated. Combined, the blend skews heavily toward tech.
SPY has meaningful exposure to financials, healthcare, and industrials that QQQ largely excludes. But when held together, the combined weight shifts toward QQQ's tech-heavy composition — especially because QQQ's positions are bigger.
| Sector | SPY | QQQ | 50/50 blend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technology | 31.5% | 51.0% | 41.3% |
| Communication Services | 9.5% | 16.0% | 12.8% |
| Consumer Discretionary | 10.5% | 15.0% | 12.8% |
| Financial Services | 13.5% | 0.0% | 6.8% |
| Healthcare | 11.0% | 6.0% | 8.5% |
| Industrials | 8.0% | 5.0% | 6.5% |
| Consumer Staples | 5.5% | 5.0% | 5.3% |
| Energy | 3.5% | 0.5% | 2.0% |
| Utilities | 2.5% | 1.0% | 1.8% |
| Real Estate | 2.0% | 0.0% | 1.0% |
| Materials | 2.0% | 0.5% | 1.3% |
Note: QQQ excludes financials by index rules. A 50/50 SPY+QQQ blend cuts financial services exposure roughly in half vs holding SPY alone. Source: State Street · Invesco · Q1 2026
What To Check
Four dimensions that reveal the real exposure
Shared top-10 names
AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, AMZN, META, GOOGL, GOOG, AVGO, and TSLA appear in both funds. These 9 names are doing most of the heavy lifting in both ETFs simultaneously.
Tech + communications combined
SPY sits at ~41% in these two sectors combined. QQQ sits at ~67%. Even at 50/50 weighting, the pair's blended exposure to these sectors exceeds 54%.
No financials in QQQ
QQQ excludes financial companies by index rules. If you hold only SPY and QQQ, you are systematically underweighting banks, insurers, and asset managers relative to the overall market.
Expense ratio difference
SPY charges 0.0945% annually. QQQ charges 0.20%. The growth tilt comes at roughly double the cost — worth asking what genuinely different exposure that buys in a portfolio already led by the same top 9 names.
A useful test: look at your combined top-10 holdings with both funds held. If the list is essentially unchanged, the second fund is reinforcing the same trade rather than expanding the portfolio.
Concrete Example
Why this pair feels safer than it is
The mental model most investors use: SPY is stable and diversified across the whole US economy. QQQ is growth and innovation. Combining them feels like balance. The problem is that the account does not respond to the story attached to the ticker — it responds to the underlying holdings. Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia are already SPY's top three positions. In QQQ, they are still the top three, at weights roughly 1.5–2× higher. Adding QQQ does not balance SPY. It amplifies the part of SPY that is already doing the most work.
This pattern has a specific failure mode. When mega-cap tech leads the market, both funds benefit, and the pair feels like smart construction. When mega-cap tech corrects — as it did sharply in 2022 — both funds decline together, and the investor who thought they were diversified discovers the two positions had the same return driver. The pair has few independent risk sources, not because the funds are bad individually, but because they share the same concentrated leadership basket.
Interpretation
When this pair is reasonable and when it deserves scrutiny
Holding both SPY and QQQ is not automatically wrong. For an investor who intentionally wants a large-cap growth tilt — who accepts that the portfolio will be heavily driven by mega-cap technology and has a long time horizon to absorb that volatility — the pair can be a deliberate choice. The problem is when the overlap is accidental: when the investor believes they are broadly diversified but the portfolio's actual economic behavior is still dominated by the same 9 names.
The right question is not "is QQQ a good ETF?" but "what does QQQ add to a portfolio that already holds SPY?" If the honest answer is "more of the same top names at higher weights," then the position sizing decision should reflect that it is a concentration choice, not a diversification move.
Guardfolio Benchmark
How Guardfolio would frame this pair in a portfolio review
Overlap above 30%
This pair hits 32.7%. At that level the two positions should be reviewed as one connected large-cap growth sleeve rather than two independent diversifiers.
9 of 10 top names shared
When nearly every top-10 name appears in both funds, the diversification case depends almost entirely on differences below the top 10 — where each individual holding is a fraction of a percent.
Tech + communications above 50% blended
Once the blended sector exposure to these two sectors exceeds half the position, the pair is behaving like a sector-concentrated portfolio whether or not that was the intention.
No stated reason to hold both
If the investor cannot articulate what specific exposure QQQ adds beyond "more Nasdaq," the duplication is usually accidental rather than strategic.
Related Reading