The Nasdaq Composite Index returned to record levels earlier this week, erasing all the losses it suffered in a recent decline. But while that all-time high was, in a sense, historic — though the index has hit dozens of records over the past year — it also represented a bigger milestone than investors may have realized. On an inflation-adjusted basis, the Nasdaq’s COMP, -0.19% recent peak allowed it to finally surpass 5,048.62, the record it touched at the top of the dot-com bubble in March 2000. It hit that milestone in late February and subsequently exceeded it, though it has since pulled back a bit. “Adjusted for inflation, the Nasdaq is only 2.0% above the peak in 2000. That comes out to a whopping annualized return of 0.10% over the past 18 years. When someone says tech is in a bubble this chart screams that it is anything but,” wrote Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial, which compiled this data. via