Anand Kumar/AI-Generated Image
Summary: Five Indian funds track the Nasdaq 100. Four of them finished the year within a point and a half of each other. The fifth is nearly twice ahead. The reason it leads has nothing to do with how the Nasdaq did.
On September 16, one unit of the Motilal Oswal Nasdaq Q50 ETF closed at Rs 275.28 on the NSE. The shares inside it were worth Rs 116.69. So Rs 159 of every Rs 275 bought nothing. No company, no earnings, no dividend. Just a place in a queue.
We wrote about this gap last week, when it was 73 per cent. It is now 135.9 per cent, the widest any Indian international ETF has traded at.
The Q50 premium nearly doubled, the rest drifted
| ETF | NAV (Rs) | Price (Rs) | Prem. Sep 10 (%) | Prem. Sep 16 (%) | Avg prem. (%) | Traded (Rs cr) | Avg daily trading (Rs cr) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Motilal Oswal Nasdaq Q50 | 116.69 | 275.28 | 72.8 | 135.9 | 14.8 | 35.9 | 1.4 |
| Mirae Asset S&P 500 Top 50 | 66.66 | 98.65 | 43.6 | 48 | 19.5 | 7.3 | 1.5 |
| Mirae Asset NYSE FANG+ | 173.63 | 232.48 | 31.1 | 33.9 | 19.7 | 17.4 | 5.6 |
| Mirae Asset Hang Seng TECH | 17.81 | 21.5 | 25.3 | 20.7 | 19.7 | 2.2 | 2.4 |
| Motilal Oswal NASDAQ 100 | 271.53 | 326.77 | 22.7 | 20.3 | 11 | 22.5 | 23.5 |
| Nippon India Hang Seng BeES | 450.28 | 464.42 | 3.1 | 3.1 | 14.4 | 2.7 | 8.1 |
| NSE close over same-day NAV, September 16, 2026. Averages: September 10, 2025 to September 3, 2026. | |||||||
On September 4, five of these six sat between 19 and 19.6 per cent above NAV. Within two sessions of SEBI's new price band, every one of them spiked. Most have since drifted back. The Q50 did not. It rose 19.8 per cent on September 16 alone while its NAV fell 0.3 per cent, and traded Rs 35.9 crore against a usual Rs 1.4 crore. So the spike was general. The blow-out is specific.
But the ETFs are the loud part. The quieter part sits inside ordinary funds that lakhs of people hold through SIPs and never look at.
Why a fund and an ETF can disagree about the same stocks
A fund has one price. An ETF has two: the NAV, which is what the investments are worth, and the market price, which is whatever a buyer on the exchange agreed to pay. Normally they stay close. If the price runs ahead, the fund house prints fresh units, sells them, and the extra supply pulls the price back. That mechanism has been off since April 2024, when ETFs hit the $1 billion ceiling on investing overseas. Fixed units, growing queue.
The table that should not look like this
Set aside the listed ETF for a moment. Five Indian mutual funds track the Nasdaq 100.
| Fund | One-year return |
|---|---|
| Motilal Oswal Nasdaq 100 FOF | 53.40% |
| Invesco EQQQ NASDAQ-100 ETF FoF | 30.80% |
| Navi Nasdaq100 FoF | 29.60% |
| Axis NASDAQ 100 FoF | 29.50% |
| ICICI Prudential NASDAQ 100 Index | 29.30% |
| Direct plans, as on September 16, 2026 | |
Four of them value the Nasdaq 100 at what those companies are worth. The fifth invests entirely in units of the Motilal Oswal NASDAQ 100 ETF, and a fund that owns a listed ETF must value it at the ETF's market price. That price is 20.3 per cent above NAV.
So the return is the Nasdaq plus a queue. The Nasdaq part is 29.8 per cent, what its own ETF's NAV returned. The other 23 points are the premium, recorded as performance.
Put it this way. Ravi put Rs 1 lakh into the Motilal Oswal FoF a year ago. Meera put Rs 1 lakh into the ICICI index fund. Ravi's statement says Rs 1,53,400. Meera's says Rs 1,29,300.
Ravi has not done better. About Rs 24,000 of his money is not Nasdaq at all. It is the premium on the ETF his fund happens to hold, and if that premium goes back to normal, his Rs 1.53 lakh becomes roughly Rs 1.28 lakh without a single American share moving.
This is not a forecast. It started last week.
In the week to September 16, the market price of the Motilal Oswal NASDAQ 100 ETF fell 4.1 per cent. The value of the shares inside it fell 0.7 per cent. The Motilal Oswal Nasdaq 100 FoF fell 4.1 per cent. It followed the price, not the shares, because the price is what it is allowed to value its holding at. Mirae's Hang Seng TECH FoF did the same: price down 5.7, shares down 1.3, fund down 5.7. Nobody sold Apple. The queue got a little shorter, and the fund holders paid for it.
And the one door still open
Baroda BNP Paribas Aqua is the only open-ended international fund still taking fresh lumpsums and new SIP registrations. Everything else in the category is shut.
It is a water-themed fund. Over five years it has returned 8.1 per cent a year. That is not a knock on the fund. But being the only door open is not a reason to walk through it.
So, two numbers
If you hold an ETF, compare its NAV with the price on your screen. If the price sits well above, you own a shortage as well as an index.
If you hold a fund of funds, open its portfolio page. If it holds an India-listed ETF rather than the index or an overseas fund, your return contains a premium that is not yours to keep.
SEBI's circular moves the reference price back to the previous day's NAV from April 1, 2027. The regulator could also bring that forward, or reopen unit creation sooner. We do not know which comes first.
The gap should close eventually. We do not know when. And when it does, nothing will have happened in America at all.
Until next week.
____________________________________________________________________
Your return tells you what happened. It does not tell you whether the fund belongs there. Value Research Fund Advisor reviews what you own and plans the rest around your goals.
Ask Value Research 
New episodes every Friday 
New Process Alert 
Seems like you've uploaded a wrong QR code. Please upload the QR code downloaded from MF Central platform.
