Finally — after much anticipation, the Nasdaq Composite Index has closed above the 5,000 mark for the first time since March 2000, and it’s very near its Internet bubble all-time closing high of 5048.62.

Of course, that’s still way short of its inflation-adjusted peak, which would require an additional gain of more than 2,000 points, as Lance Roberts of STA Wealth Management wrote recently.

But as this column pointed out last September, the Nasdaq has recovered, at least in nominal terms, much faster than any other major stock bubble of the past century.

Remember, the index lost a mind-boggling 78% of its value from March 2000 to October 2002, and it’s taken just about 15 years to get back to those heights.

It took the Dow Jones Industrial Average 25 years to match its 1929 highs. Tokyo’s Nikkei isn’t even back to half of its 39,000 nosebleed peak in December 1989, a quarter-century ago.

True, this isn’t your big brother or sister’s Nasdaq. It has many fewer companies than traded in 2000, their average market capitalization is almost twice as high, and their median age is 25 years, vs. 15 at the bubble peak.

And some stalwarts from 2000 are shadows of their former selves. Microsoft MSFT, -1.24% and Intel INTC, -0.85% trade at 60% of their 2000 market capitalizations, Cisco CSCO, -1.38% and Yahoo US:YHOO are at 40% and Qualcomm QCOM, -3.64% is worth slightly more than a third of what it was then. WorldCom, which ranked fifth back then, vaporized in the 2002 accounting scandals and its remnants were acquired by Verizon VZ, -0.39% .

But the old guard has been more than replaced by a new wave of technology and biotechnology powers. Apple AAPL, -3.17% , Amazon AMZN, -1.78% , Priceline US:PCLN and Starbucks SBUX, -2.07% added more than $1 trillion of market capitalization since 2000, with Apple alone contributing an astonishing three-quarters of that gain.

Companies that weren’t even public when the dot.com bubble burst — Google GOOG, -2.37% , Facebook FB, -0.89% , Netflix NFLX, -0.05% and Tesla Motors TSLA, +4.42% — have created $635 billion in value for Nasdaq investors.

And biotechnology stalwarts Amgen AMGN, -0.14% , Biogen Idec BIIB, -0.32% , Celgene US:CELG and Gilead Sciences GILD, +0.01% have tacked on $315 billion in stock market value since March 2000.

Altogether, that’s $2 trillion in additional market value created by only 12 companies.

Biotech, in fact, has been an even bigger winner than technology itself, as the chart below shows.

Since March 2009, the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index has soared 484%, almost a sixfold increase. The First Trust Nasdaq 100 Tech Sector ETF QTEC, -1.31% , which tracks technology companies in the 100 largest Nasdaq stocks, has gained 324% during that period, while the Nasdaq itself rallied almost 300%.

Technology and health care have been my two favorite market sectors for some time. I think they’re both in secular (long-term) bull markets. I like the Guggenheim S&P Equal Weight Health Care RYH, -0.66% and the Guggenheim S&P Equal Weight Technology RYT, -0.93% ETFs, and own both in my retirement account.

It’s all a tribute to creative destruction, Joseph Schumpeter’s great insight that capitalism creates new opportunities and industries as it destroys others. So, as old tech has lagged, new tech and biotech have surged ahead.

These Dazzling Dozen companies have transformed the way we communicate and entertain ourselves, and how we shop, drive, travel and drink coffee. The biotechs have launched drugs that treat multiple sclerosis, high cholesterol, hepatitis, HIV-AIDS and various forms of cancer.

Some of you lay this whole bull market at the feet of the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policy. But when you look at what these pioneering companies have done to make them worth $2 trillion more, it’s clear that much more than funny money is involved.

Nasdaq 5,000 proves it: American innovation is alive and well. And investors who were smart enough to get in and stay in are the big winners.

Howard R. Gold is a MarketWatch columnist and founder and editor of GoldenEgg Investing, which offers free market commentary and simple, low-cost, low-risk retirement investing plans. Follow him on Twitter @howardrgold.