NEW YORK — Ask what the Nasdaq did on Monday and there are four defensible answers, because four different things carry the name.
The Composite, which holds roughly three thousand listings, fell 0.76 per cent. The Nasdaq 100, which holds the largest hundred non-financial companies, fell 0.97. The September futures on that index were quoted 0.77 per cent below their previous settlement. And Nasdaq, Inc., the company that owns the exchange, publishes the indices and licenses them to the funds that track them, rose 0.58 per cent to $98.79.
Three of the four fell. The fourth is the only one you can hold a share certificate in, and it is 2.9 per cent below its 52-week high while the index it publishes is 5.7 per cent below its own.
That is not a coincidence and it is not a quirk of a single session. It is what happens when a business is paid for activity rather than for direction.
Nasdaq Index Today: The Four Answers
| Instrument | Level or price | Session | Below 52-week high |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nasdaq Composite (IXIC) | 25,980.19 | -0.76% | -4.5% |
| Nasdaq 100 (NDX) | 29,023.18 | -0.97% | -5.7% |
| Nasdaq 100 futures (NQ, September) | 29,161.50 | -0.77% | — |
| Nasdaq, Inc. (NDAQ) | $98.79 | +0.58% | -2.9% |
| Live intraday quotes, not settlements. Distance from the 52-week high is Eastern Herald’s calculation from the quoted level. The futures line compares the front-month contract with its previous settlement and has no meaningful 52-week high, because contracts expire and roll. | |||
The first three are measurements. The fourth is a business, and it is the one almost nobody means when they say the Nasdaq is down.
The Fourth Nasdaq Is a Company
Nasdaq, Inc. is listed on its own exchange under the ticker NDAQ. It earns money in three broad ways: from companies that list shares, from the technology and surveillance software it sells to other market operators and banks, and from trading activity on its venues. It also sells the indices.
In the quarterly report it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, total revenues for the three months to June 30 were $2,532 million, up from $2,101 million a year earlier. After stripping out transaction-based expenses, which are the rebates and clearing fees that pass straight through to market participants, revenues were $1,500 million against $1,306 million. Operating income was $712 million.
| Business line | Q2 2026 ($m) | Q2 2025 ($m) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Index | 271 | 196 | +38% |
| Financial Crime Management Technology | 98 | 81 | +21% |
| Regulatory Technology | 120 | 104 | +15% |
| Capital Markets Technology | 321 | 279 | +15% |
| Market Services, net | 340 | 306 | +11% |
| Data and Listing Services | 217 | 198 | +10% |
| Workflow and Insights | 133 | 126 | +6% |
| Revenues less transaction-based expenses | 1,500 | 1,306 | +15% |
| Figures as reported. Percentage changes are Eastern Herald’s calculation. Total revenues before transaction-based expenses were $2,532 million against $2,101 million, a rise of 21 per cent; the difference is $712 million of transaction rebates and $320 million of brokerage, clearance and exchange fees that pass through to market participants. | |||
The Fastest-Growing Line Is Selling the Index Itself
The Index line grew 38 per cent, faster than anything else Nasdaq does, and it is the one directly connected to the numbers quoted at the top of this article.
That business licenses the Nasdaq 100 and its relatives to the people who need to use them: exchange-traded funds tracking the index, the futures and options contracts settled against it, and the structured products written on it. The fee generally scales with the assets tracking the index and the contracts traded on it, not with whether the index went up.
So when investors sold the Nasdaq 100 on Monday, they mostly did it through instruments that pay Nasdaq a licence fee. When they hedged with futures, that paid too. Market Services, the trading business, grew 11 per cent net of pass-through costs, and gross trading revenue rose 25 per cent.
There is a real limit to this, and it is worth stating rather than glossing. If the assets tracking the index fall far enough for long enough, licence revenue falls with them, because the fee is levied on a shrinking pool. A 5.7 per cent drawdown does not do that. A prolonged bear market would.
Why the Distinction Matters This Week
The four Nasdaqs disagree most when the market is narrow, and this market is very narrow. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 2.70 per cent on Monday and sits 22.1 per cent below its 52-week high, deep in a bear market, while the Dow rose 0.26 per cent and the S&P 500 lost 0.28.
Each Nasdaq measures a different slice of that. Our Nasdaq 100 column found the median member of that index 17.6 per cent below its own high against 5.5 per cent for the index, because a handful of very large companies hold the number up. Our Nasdaq Composite column found the wider index tracking the narrower one at a 0.97 correlation, so the extra 2,900 companies barely register. Our Nasdaq futures column found that most of the daily move now happens overnight, before New York opens. And our session column found breadth almost exactly even, with roughly half the largest names higher.
Four readings, one market, and none of them wrong. The mistake is treating any single one as the answer.
Index membership itself is a decision somebody makes, which is easy to forget. When SpaceX listed in June it joined the Nasdaq 100 less than a month later, among the fastest inclusions the index has made. Every fund tracking the index had to buy it. That is the index business working exactly as designed, and it is why the licence is worth paying for.
What This Column Cannot Tell You Yet
We cannot tell you how much of Nasdaq’s index revenue comes from the Nasdaq 100 specifically. The company reports Index as a single line covering its whole family of benchmarks and the products written on them, so the share attributable to the index most people mean by the Nasdaq is not separable from the filing.
We also cannot say how the licence fees are struck. Nasdaq does not publish the rate card, the basis-point charge on tracking assets, or the terms of individual agreements with fund managers and futures exchanges. That means the 38 per cent growth is visible but its drivers are not: more assets tracking the same indices, higher fees, new products, or a mix of all three would look identical in the one number the company chose to give.
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