Every day, the American bull market looks more and more like the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. Except when it comes to valuations.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index jumped above 2000 today, and the Nasdaq Composite Index is within 10 percent of a record reached in March 2000, a time when Pets.com Inc. was worth more than $150 million. Investors have seen annualized returns of 24.5 percent since March 2009, compared with 27.1 percent over an equal number of days ending March 24, 2000, the peak of the Internet rally, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Stocks are catching up to the pace of more than a decade ago amid record profits, near-zero interest rates, and economic growth that's expected to accelerate. While the dot-com bubble peaked with the S&P 500 trading at close to 30 times annual earnings of its companies, the valuation is about 19 times now, data from S&P Dow Jones Indices show.

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