The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index posted its first record finish in more than two years Thursday, as inflation figures sparked a relief rally.
The tech-heavy index
COMP,
which comprises most of the stocks that trade on the Nasdaq stock exchange and is one of the world’s most closely followed benchmarks, finished with a gain of 144.18 points, or 0.9%, at 16,091.92, topping its close of 16,057.44 set on Nov. 19, 2021.
That ended a streak of 569 trading days without a record close, the longest since a run of 3,801 trading days that ran from the bursting of the dot-com bubble in March 2000 through April 2015.
The Nasdaq hit an intraday high of 16,115.96, remaining shy of its intraday record of 16,212.23, set on Nov. 22, 2021.
The finish is a milestone for a bull market that was widely doubted due to the index’s reputation for delivering potentially devastating head fakes.
The Nasdaq saw three rallies of 40% or more over the course of the bear market that followed the dot-com bust, with none marking the beginning of a lasting bull run, analysts at Baird Private Wealth Management noted previously.
The S&P 500
SPX
also closed at a record on Thursday, its 14th of 2024, leaving it up more than 5% in February and over 6% so far this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA
closed with a small gain, also cementing monthly and year-to-date gains. Both the S&P 500 and Dow were off to their strongest starts to a calendar year since 2019.
