The Nasdaq Composite peaked at 5,048.62 during the dot-com bubble on March 10, 2000.
The index was especially exposed to internet and technology companies, many of which attracted enormous valuations despite limited profits or even no established business model. Low interest rates, venture-capital funding, optimistic forecasts, and rapid internet adoption helped drive the speculative boom.
After the March 2000 peak, the Nasdaq Composite fell for more than two years as investors reassessed technology companies and financing became harder to obtain. The collapse erased trillions of dollars in market value and helped define the broader dot-com crash.
The Nasdaq Composite is often confused with the Nasdaq-100, a separate index of large nonfinancial companies listed on Nasdaq. The 5,048.62 figure belongs to the Composite. The index later surpassed that 2000 record in 2015, after a 15-year interval.