The Nasdaq Composite Index needed 31 months to plunge 78 percent after the Internet bubble burst in 2000. Climbing out of the hole took more than 12 years.
Led by a 132-fold increase in Apple Inc. and a 13-fold jump in Google Inc., stocks in the gauge on Thursday cleared the record 5,048 threshold that taunted investors for 15 years as a symbol of dot-com excess. The Nasdaq has advanced more than 350 percent since bottoming in October 2002 after the slump erased about $6 trillion from American equity prices.
