Nasdaq 100 Plays Catch-Up - Real Time Insight - Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Biogen (NASDAQ:BIIB)

The Nasdaq 100 index is today less than 1% from its 52-week high established in March. My bet earlier this month was that it would follow the S&P 500 to new highs after the spring "correction in growth" had subsided. Here's the chart...

Granted, the two indexes hold many of the same names. Here are the top holdings of the NDX (QQQ is the tracking ETF)...

Top Ten Holdings with Weightings

Apple Inc AAPL: 13.13%
Microsoft Corp MSFT: 8.37%
Google Inc Class A GOOGL: 3.74%
Google Inc GOOG: 3.68%
Amazon.com Inc AMZN: 3.49%
Qualcomm Inc QCOM: 3.32%
Intel Corp INTC: 3.31%
Gilead Sciences Inc GILD: 3.01%
Cisco Systems Inc CSCO: 2.97%
Facebook Inc Class A FB: 2.95%

%Assets in Top 10: 47.96% (as of March 31 from PowerShares data)

Other popular Tech, Biotech, and Consumer Discretionary names in the index include Netflix NFLX and Priceline PCLN, Biogen-Idec BIIB and Celgene, and Starbucks and Costco.

My topic today revolves around institutional appetite for these big "growth" stocks, if INTC and CSCO can still be called that.

What is driving large investors to put money into these names and what does it say about their forward views of the economy and the market?

One answer might be that institutional investors in the aggregate don't stay in much cash for very long and these companies provide a relatively safer allocation to growth than their higher-beta mid and small cap brethren. Plus many names corrected enough to provide some margin of opportunity in a broad market rally.

So does that mean these stocks are just safe places for big money to hide out for a while?

Or, are many large investors really very optimistic about the economy and the stock market?

What say you?

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