July 17, 2000: Crash

7/17/2000 - NASDAQ: MCTR - $25.5625

After the plunge in March and April, Mercator stock began to creep upwards until July 17th when a bad earnings report led to a 60% drop. Although still above the 1998 levels, the stock was definitely hurting. My $30 options were officially worthless.

We weren't losing money, we were just barely breaking even which was enough to keep nervous investors spooked. The surrounding tech market decline dragged us further down. Luckily we hired a couple more VPs so they'd straighten things out...

We had an August surprise, not the good kind of surprise, the kind that knocks your stock down another 40%. We had to restate some quarterly earnings due to a bookkeeping error. Investors really, really don't like when that happens. It's a sign of either a) corruption b) incompetence c) both. I don't believe anyone at Mercator was corrupt so I have to go with b).

8/16/2000 - NASDAQ: MCTR - $16.0625

In a couple months the CEO, and founder of the company, would be forced out along with many long time leaders.

If that wasn't depressing enough, Windows ME was released in September. We installed it on one test machine and were appalled at how bad it was. Up until then every version of Windows was an improvement over the prior. Even seemingly minor things like Windows 98 Second Edition were notable improvements. Windows ME was a step down from 98, and paled in comparison to Windows 2000. We did the bare minimum testing we had to and hoped no customers chose to "upgrade".