The Nasdaq Composite,
the U.S. market index most closely associated with technology stocks, closed at
an all-time high on Thursday, surpassing a 2000 record set just before the
dotcom crash.
Its record close of 5,056.06
capped a slow, unsteady climb from a 2002 low of 1,114.11 that spanned a
recession, the rise of biotech and social media, and the explosive growth of
mobile phones that has helped make Apple the most valuable company in the
United States.
The Nasdaq jumped as
high as 5,073.091 on Thursday, led by shares of Apple, which has been among the
biggest positive influences on the index in recent years. The index's last
record close of 5,048.62 was hit on March 10, 2000.
Strategists say there is still
room for the Nasdaq to rise.
"Now that it's making a new
high, I don't think it's just going to stop. It has the potential to go up,
absent some external event that I can't predict. I think the companies look as
though they ought to power through this environment," said Walter Price,
senior portfolio manager and managing director of the AllianzGI Global
Technology fund in San Francisco.
In 2000, "a lot of the
high-growth companies were selling at 200 or 300 times next year's earnings.
This is nothing like that. This is a whole different world versus 2000."
The Dow Jones industrial average
rose 20.42 points, or 0.11 percent, to 18,058.69, the S&P 500 gained
4.97 points, or 0.24 percent, to 2,112.93 and the Nasdaq Composite
added 20.89 points, or 0.41 percent, to 5,056.06.
The Nasdaq lost 78.4
percent of its value from the 2000 peak to its 2002 low 31 months later. From
the March 2009 trough to today's record, the index gained 300 percent.
The Nasdaq Composite's
market capitalization is $8.2 trillion, compared with a $19.5 trillion market
cap for the S&P 500, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining
ones on the NYSE by 2,039 to 956, for a 2.13-to-1 ratio on the upside; on the Nasdaq,
1,659 issues rose and 1,061 fell, for a 1.56-to-1 ratio favoring advancers.