The Nasdaq Stock Market, in an effort to make exchange-traded funds more widely available to smaller investors, debuted this week a service giving investors direct, fee-free access to its popular Nasdaq-100 Trust, better known as the Cubes.

The service, called QQQDirect, is offered through Reston, Va.-based broker-dealer MyStockFund Securities at www.qqqdirect.com. Investors will set up a brokerage account with MyStockFund, which will allow participants to purchase regular dollar amounts – as little as $10 – of the Cubes once a month at no cost to the investor or the fund. Any additional share purchases, of the Cubes or any other security, are subject to MyStockFund's fee schedule. In addition, shareholders will be charged a $12.99 fee to sell their Cubes shares.

"The dollar-cost average investors have a very difficult time dollar-cost averaging ETFs, because of the transaction cost," John Jacobs, the Nasdaq's chief marketing officer and CEO of Nasdaq Global Funds, said. "This is the first program that allows an individual investor to buy an ETF without paying any costs."

"We're addressing an overlooked, or underserved, segment of the marketplace," added Stewart Christ, CEO of MyStockFund parent OnLine Investments. He said the new program is to promote "the 401(k) mindset" of "disciplined, long-term saving and investing."

The Cubes are the third-largest exchange-traded fund by assets in the U.S., with more than $21 billion AUM, and Christ has equally high hopes for QQQDirect, the outline of which was announced in June.

"We believe it has the potential to be the largest direct-purchase program in the world," he says. The Nasdaq will undertake to promote the program.

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Initially, MyStockFund will purchase the Cubes shares once a week, on Thursday, but if the program is successful, it may stagger the purchases or even become an authorized participant, creating shares of the ETF itself, Jacobs and Christ said.

Christ said that, in principle, a QQQDirect-like program could be used for any ETF, but that there are "no current plans" to do so. Jacobs said other Nasdaq funds – Nasdaq Global Funds sponsors four other U.S. ETFs – would likely follow the Cubes into a direct-investment plan, should it prove successful.