I’ve got a wild chart for you. It looks like some crazy biotechnology micro-cap, but it isn’t.
Yep, it’s Kodak. Once one of the great American corporations, it is now a fraction of its former self, thanks to one of those classic “new technology could kill us, so we’ll ignore it” decisions by senior management (perhaps we can call it The Blockbuster Effect).
When I looked at the chart, I highlighted two particularly wild swings. The enormous one, tinted in green, turns out to be the doings of none other than Trump during his first term in office, in which he thought it would be a crackerjack idea for Kodak to pivot from a film company to………..a pharmaceutical outfit.
To which I can only reply:
Growing up in the 70s, I probably heard the schmaltzy Paul Anka theme song for Kodak a billion times or so.
