Nasdaq Composite Live Price, Chart & Market Data

The Nasdaq Composite is a market-capitalisation-weighted index that includes virtually every stock listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market — roughly 3,000 companies in 2026, spanning mega-cap technology, biotechnology, communications, consumer-internet, semiconductor manufacturing, and a long tail of smaller growth and small-cap names. Because the Nasdaq exchange historically attracted growth-oriented technology listings (Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco in the 1980s and 1990s; later Amazon, Google, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla), the index is the world's most-watched tech-economy benchmark.

There is an important distinction many investors miss: the Nasdaq COMPOSITE includes all Nasdaq-listed stocks, whereas the Nasdaq-100 strips out financials and keeps only the 100 largest non-financial Nasdaq-listed names. The NQ E-mini futures contract tracks the Nasdaq-100, not the Composite. The two indices move very similarly on a daily basis (correlation > 0.95) but diverge meaningfully during biotechnology or small-cap-growth specific moves, since those names are in the Composite but not the Nasdaq-100.

The Nasdaq Composite launched on 5 February 1971 with a base level of 100. The Nasdaq Stock Market itself was the world's first fully electronic exchange and was originally an over-the-counter venue for unlisted stocks. The Composite gained mainstream prominence in the late 1990s during the dot-com bubble, peaking at 5,048.62 on 10 March 2000 — a level it would not retake until April 2015, fifteen years later. The Composite crossed 10,000 in mid-2020, 15,000 in late 2021, and 20,000 in late 2024.

Notable drawdowns include the 2000-2002 dot-com crash (-78% peak-to-trough — the deepest drawdown of any major modern equity index), the 2008-09 GFC (-55%), the COVID-19 crash (-30%), and the 2022 growth-stock derating (-36%). The Nasdaq's higher growth tilt means its bull-market rallies are sharper and its bear-market drawdowns are deeper than the broader S&P 500.

Nasdaq Composite trades during US cash hours. Pre-market and after-hours sessions are very active for tech names that report earnings outside cash hours. In IST:

The Nasdaq Composite is the cleanest single-number proxy for the technology cycle. When the AI cycle is in expansion (as in much of 2023-2025), the Composite outperforms the S&P 500. When rate-hike cycles compress growth-stock valuations (2022), the Composite underperforms. The ratio of Nasdaq Composite to S&P 500 (often plotted as IXIC/SPX) is a key tactical-allocation indicator used by global macro desks.

On Liveworldmarket the Composite price refreshes every 15 seconds via Yahoo Finance. After cash close, the directional movement of the NQ E-mini futures contract usually feeds into the next Composite open, though small biotech and microcap names that report after-hours can sometimes move the Composite independently of NQ.