They say that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.
I suppose that's partly true, but no one really thinks about whoever it was that was in the business of dealing with the mice beforehand. They're going to suffer, because it's their doorway that will suddenly find itself as empty as a hermit's address book.
I present to you below four long-term charts of some companies that were on the losing side of mousetrap creation. They have several things in common:
+ At one time, they had valuable, thriving common stock;
+ They were leaders in at least one technological field;
+ They allowed competitors (like, oh, say, Apple) run off with their market by creating something better;
+ Their stock has since entered a death-spiral
Some true believers of these securities might point to Apple from 1996 as the kind of turnaround they anticipate. My retort would be that there's pretty much only one Apple on the planet, and I can't really think of any other company in the tech field (except, I guess, IBM from the early 90s) that has risen from the ashes.
Momentum can be a company's best friend (AAPL) or worst enemy (RIMM).
