A little hack I’ve been using AI for lately is to get quick analysis on how each of the largest companies in my ETFs are going. Using the below prompt gives a fantastic summary of how each company in the fund has performed, along with a quick overview of the fund itself and a sentence or two on each company. It’s a great summary that I run through over a coffee most mornings. I’ve found that Gemini gives the most accurate data, whereas ChatGPT can go in all sorts of directions, which ties back to earlier conversations about the need to fact-check our AI friends before we rely on them too much.

Anyhow, thought I’d chuck this up as something that helps me. What are others using AI for to help with tracking, or even allocating, your investments?

PS: Just change QTOP to your ETF of choice in the prompt below to have a go.

Prompt

The QTOP fund is down overnight. Please look at the top 10 companies in the fund and tell me if they have gone up/down, if there is any announcements or news that has impacted each individual company? Is there any specific reasons the fund is down?

Reply (Gemini - free version)

Tech-Heavy QTOP ETF Declines as Top Holdings Tumble

The iShares Nasdaq Top 30 Stocks ETF (QTOP), likely the fund you are referring to as "TOPQ", experienced a downturn in overnight trading, closing down approximately 0.48% at $29.21 on Thursday, August 21, 2025. The decline was primarily driven by a broad sell-off among its top ten holdings, which are heavily concentrated in the technology sector. All but one of the top ten companies in the fund saw their stock prices fall.

Here's a breakdown of the performance of the top 10 companies within the QTOP ETF and any relevant news that may have influenced their trading activity:

Why was the QTOP fund down?

The primary reason for the QTOP ETF's decline was the widespread negative performance of its largest holdings. As a market-cap-weighted ETF, the performance of giants like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon heavily influences the fund's overall value. With all of these major tech players in the red, the fund's downward movement was almost inevitable.

There were no single catastrophic announcements from any of these companies. Instead, the decline appears to be part of a broader market sentiment that saw a rotation out of some of the high-flying tech stocks that have performed well recently. Factors such as ongoing inflation concerns, and sector-specific profit-taking can contribute to such a downturn. The substantial drop in Costco's share price also weighed significantly on the fund's performance.

In summary, the QTOP ETF's negative performance on August 21, 2025, can be attributed to a collective decline in the stock prices of its top technology-focused holdings, rather than a singular piece of news from any individual company.