NewSquare trims $14.8m QTEC position after 60% technology run

NewSquare Capital cut its position in the First Trust NASDAQ-100-Technology Sector Index Fund by 64,705 shares in the first quarter, a $14.80 million trade that left the holding at 0.03 per cent of the firm’s assets under management, according to a 13F filing disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 8.

The sale lands as the technology ETF, which trades under the ticker QTEC, sits roughly 60 per cent higher than a year earlier. QTEC closed at $285.77 on May 7. Its price-to-earnings ratio is now above 38, well above the long-run blended forward multiple of the S&P 500.

QTEC tracks the Nasdaq-100 Technology Sector Index using an equal-weighted approach and holds $3.3 billion in net assets. Top constituents include Intel, AMD, Seagate, Marvell, Arm Holdings and Qualcomm. Semiconductors and software together account for more than 70 per cent of the fund’s industry exposure, which ties it tightly to the artificial intelligence and chip-design names behind recent U.S. equity gains.

QTEC differs from the larger Invesco QQQ in two respects. QQQ holds all 100 Nasdaq-100 names with market-capitalisation weighting, which concentrates exposure in Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta. QTEC strips that universe down to the technology subset, then weights each constituent equally, which reduces mega-cap concentration and raises the relative weight of mid-cap chip and software names. The trade-off is more direct exposure to the semiconductor cycle and less to the platform-software cohort.

The 12-month return through April 30 was close to 50 per cent. The S&P 500 returned about 31 per cent over the same window. The gap of roughly 19 percentage points is the widest QTEC has run versus the broader index since the post-pandemic Nasdaq surge of 2020.

NewSquare’s broader portfolio still skews toward broad-market exposure. Its top five positions, by quarter-end value, are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF, Schwab U.S. Large-Cap ETF, iShares Core S&P Mid-Cap ETF and Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF. The quarter-end value of its remaining QTEC stake had fallen by $14.92 million from end-Q4 2025.

What the filing shows

The trade size is small in absolute portfolio terms but directional in posture. Reducing a sector-concentrated technology fund to 3 basis points of assets after a 60 per cent run is a more decisive trim than typical rebalancing.

Jonathan Ponciano, writing for The Motley Fool, framed the move as “disciplined profit-taking after a huge run” rather than “a broad retreat from equities”. NewSquare retained its core ETF positions across U.S. and international equities and bonds.

Reducing a tech-only sector ETF rather than trimming individual chip names lets the manager pull aggregate exposure without committing to a stock-specific view. It also avoids the tax friction and execution risk of selling individual long-held positions one at a time. The shape of the trade reads as a top-down sleeve adjustment by the firm, not a bet against any single component name.

Why the read matters

The disclosure adds to a small set of institutional filings showing managers peel concentrated exposure off the AI rally without exiting equities outright. Sector-weighted technology ETFs like QTEC are the cleanest expression of that trade. They bypass the single-stock diversification of the broader Nasdaq-100 and isolate semiconductor and software exposure.

With more than 70 per cent of QTEC’s holdings in those two sub-industries, a cut to the position is functionally a lower-conviction call on chips and software rather than a view on the wider market.

The fund’s underlying holdings carry similar valuation pressure. AMD, Intel, Marvell and Qualcomm have all traded at extended multiples for much of the past year on AI-spend assumptions tied to hyperscaler capital plans. Capital-expenditure guidance from Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta has reset higher across the past two earnings cycles, with a rising share of cash flow going to data-centre build-out and the chips that power it. QTEC’s blended P/E above 38 sits inside that backdrop.

What happens next

13F filings disclose end-of-quarter positions with a 45-day lag, so NewSquare’s actual sale could have taken place any time between January and the end of March. Subsequent quarterly filings, due in mid-August, will show whether the trim is a one-off rebalance or the start of a wider de-risking by the firm.

The 45-day disclosure lag is itself relevant. Investment advisors with U.S. equity holdings above $100 million must report long positions via 13F within that window, but the rules do not require disclosure of short positions, intra-quarter trades or derivatives gains. Inferring conviction from a quarter-end snapshot can therefore mislead.

Other large 13F filers with sector-tech exposure publish over the next two weeks. A pattern of similar trims would carry more weight than a single position change.

QTEC was trading near record highs into early May. The SEC filing did not move the price meaningfully on May 8.