What's been moving the Nasdaq 100 in August?

Earlier today, we discussed the performance of the popular Vanguard Australian Shares Index ETF (ASX: VAS) over the month of August. But while VAS is a popular ETF, it only covers the performance of the Aussie share market. But another ASX exchange-traded fund (ETF) which is also very popular with Aussie investors is the BetaShares Nasdaq 100 ETF (ASX: NDQ).

Rather than tracking any Australian shares, NDQ is an ETF that instead mirrors the American NASDAQ-100 (INDEXNASDAQ: NDX) Index. The Nasdaq is one of the two major stock exchanges in the United States of America. Since it's a lot younger than its older sibling the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq tends to hold the newer, hipper US companies. You'll find all 5 of the FAANG stocks on it, as well as other trendy companies like Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA), Adobe Inc (NASDAQ: ADBE) or NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA).

So how has this index fared over the month of August? Investors in NDQ are certainly used to a high bar when it comes to performance. After all, NDQ has returned an average of 27.23% per annum over the past 5 years. In contrast, the ASX-based VAS ETF has returned 10.08% over the same period.

How has the BetaShares Nasdaq 100 ETF performed over August?

So let's check out NDQ's performance over August. Remember, since NDQ holds US shares, and is unhedged, the fluctuations of the Australian dollar against the US dollar will affect its value for we Aussie investors, as well as the price movements of the underlying shares as well.

So NDQ units started August at a price of $32.09 a unit. Today, on the last day of August, this ETF is commanding a unit price of $34.09 at the time of writing. That means that NDQ units have enjoyed a gain of approximately 6.23% for the month.

Conversely, the ASX-based VAS ETF has returned around 2.1% for the month. Once again, NDQ beats it out.

So what has moved this Nasdaq-based ETF over the past month? Well, the Australian dollar has fallen around half a percentage point for the month, which would have given NDQ units a small valuation boost.

But we can't look over the performance of NDQ's underlying holdings.

FAANGs bared

So this ETF's top shares are (in order) Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), Tesla, NVIDIA, PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL), and Adobe.

Apple has enjoyed gains of around 5% over the past month.

Microsoft is up 6.5%.

Alphabet (Class A) has gained 7.3%.

Amazon has appreciated by 2.8%.

And Facebook has risen by 6.8%.

So already we can see where the vast majority of NDQ's August gains have come from. And since the month just passed has been very kind to most markets, we can probably assume that the majority of NDQ's other holdings have also had a good month.

But with an ETF that's averaged 27.23% per annum over the past 5 years, this is just another notch on the belt.

The BetaShares Nasdaq 100 ETF charges a management fee of 0.48% per annum.