All prices from last few trading days of the year. Dividends are not taken into account. Other than the dot-com bubble, we have 12 major technology companies whose stock price has gone nowhere in 17 years, despite tens of billions on R&D, and billions on patents. And even with dividends, for may stocks, you would have a better return if you just bought a hunk of gold. Given that gold is an investment in monetary/fiscal mismanagement by governments, there may be a case for gold also being an investment in technology/R&D mismanagement by companies - or an indicator of technology exhaustion / peak innovation. But certainly such graphs necessitate more emphasis on R&D and patent quality, not quantity.

Why is this happening, beyond technology stagnation? One argument, especially in the case of Hewlett Packard, is poor oversight of corporate managers by Bad Directors (and why they aren't thrown out) (New York Times, 29 March 2013), often supported by large mutual funds who don't care that their purchases of these stocks do nothing for their clients.

Then, take another big technology (patenting) company, General Electric, another stock above that has gone nowhere with its technology, and worse needed government FDIC support to survive. So where did any of GE's growth come in the 1990s and 2000s, if not from (patented) technology? Some have argued that Jack Welch was running a Madoff-like cook-the-books scheme with GE Financial Services (which at one point was the entire value of the company), reporting a steady 15% annual return for years. See Bernie, Jack and the rest of us (Barrons, 13 March 2009), and A Foolish Consistency[with Bernie Madoff and Jack Welch], (The Agonist, 15 December 2008).

TABLE OF DATA TO CUT-AND-PASTE

YEAR	Gold/40	Cisco	Intel	HP	Yahoo	Sony	Microsoft	Nokia	GE	TI	TechPats/100
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995	9.68	4.15	7.09	20.94	0.00	30.69	5.48	2.44	11.99	6.44	22.51
1996	9.22	7.33	16.92	25.82	0.76	33.12	10.53	3.58	17.06	8.02	26.01
1997	7.25	8.87	17.72	30.20	4.13	43.50	16.00	4.12	24.00	11.20	25.71
1998	7.17	23.20	29.64	34.16	29.62	36.00	34.67	15.05	33.97	21.40	35.17
1999	7.25	53.56	41.16	56.86	108.17	142.37	56.00	47.76	51.53	48.31	37.39
2000	6.83	38.25	30.06	31.56	15.03	69.50	21.70	43.50	47.94	47.38	41.59
2001	6.92	18.54	32.24	20.82	9.15	46.25	33.94	25.25	40.73	28.66	48.49
2002	8.57	13.01	16.40	17.94	8.29	41.60	26.90	15.55	24.70	15.29	56.16
2003	10.43	23.75	31.36	22.60	22.14	34.30	27.21	16.69	31.00	28.83	68.21
2004	10.90	19.32	23.39	20.97	37.68	38.96	26.72	15.67	36.50	24.62	71.55
2005	12.82	17.12	24.96	28.72	39.18	40.80	26.50	18.30	35.05	32.07	68.50
2006	15.80	27.33	20.25	41.19	25.55	42.83	29.86	20.32	37.21	28.80	92.42
2007	20.85	27.56	26.76	51.36	23.45	54.30	35.10	38.74	37.34	33.40	85.01
2008	21.75	16.27	14.18	34.97	12.34	20.34	19.13	15.50	15.97	14.35	88.74
2009	27.20	23.33	20.00	52.59	16.14	29.00	30.50	13.00	16.00	25.50	97.60
2010	35.12	20.23	21.03	44.00	16.63	35.71	27.91	10.32	18.29	32.50	109.64
2011	38.27	18.08	24.25	25.76	16.13	18.04	25.96	4.82	17.91	29.11	94.88
2012	41.38	19.65	20.23	13.68	19.90	11.01	26.71	3.81	17.91	29.11	103.18