Then I think the what you are asking (implying) is that the NAS might not be down from where it was 2.5 years ago if not heavily weighted by the big stocks.
That would be a reasonable question to ask. Is the NAS chart misleading because the large caps underperformed such that the entire index was lower than it would have otherwise been, what would your results would be if you equally weighted each of the stocks?
Obviously, there is no way I can know for sure, but I took your 5 stocks that you mentioned "MSFT INTC CSCO DELL & GOOG" and added 7 more to equal the top 12 (QCOM, EBAY, AMGN, CMCSA, ORCL, AAPL, YHOO).
Then, I looked at how those 12 did since January 26th, 2004 when the NAS was 2154 (2135 today). Here they are from best to worst.
The average (mean) of the group is +58%. Obviously, that is grossly misleading because the market cap on January 26th, 2004 for AAPL was very small compared to MSFT - even if it isn't today. However, I find it hard to believe that this group (even on a market-weighted basis) would be below zero for the last 2.5 years.
Therefore, I think it is valid to look at the index as a whole and say that the NAS is BELOW where it was 2.5 years ago -- and for that statement to have validity as it pertains to all tech stocks.
It is clear to me that the entire gains that the NAS made after the disastrous October, 2002 bottom were made in the next 14 months (to January, 2004). The 29 months since then have been a wash.
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