That is true, but it's all in how you're looking at it. When they were telling people to switch over to SSYS it was in the hundreds, I don't think anyone who did the switch would be happy to have lost "only half" their money. True we went down further, but that only means we have more distance to climb and a much cheaper share price for buyers. You want to buy a company at half it's former price or one that's one third of it's former price, all things being equal?
As I've said before, buying and selling is basically what you do with stocks where the underlying company is in a mature market with a mature product, where the "name of the game" is basically one of companies taking customers from one another with "new and improved" products and sweeter deals.
3DS isn't in that kind of market, meaning that they are not yet reduced to going after one anothers customers, we are all working to grab as many of the new customers as they arrive. So, for a good long time, if customers switch from one company to another, it's most likely caused by the offering of products or services that the other ones don't have.
Remember we started with plastics. Then, surprise, surprise, when the marketing got going in earnest, it was discovered that more and more customers were interested in metals, 3DS had to shift gears and that hiccup casued the share price to stumble. Coming as it did, in the midst of heavy short selling and a welter of media fed bashing articles, hardly we wonder we sank.
But the company just keeps chugg, chugging along, doing its business and doing it well enough to keep the profits coming in. So, while we can look at the charts and other metrics to see what the future could look like, what we will be unable to see is, if any big breaks or discoveries/inventions/improvements suddenly appear, what that will do to earnings and share price will be totally unexpected, and that's the reason for holding tight, because that's the only way to ensure you capture those gains.
Believe me, no one expected 1000 dollar Google, or 800 dollar AAPL and such, if they did their pre rise charts wouldn't look a bit like they did. Lots of people were jumping in and out of those stocks, hoping to accumulate their profits on lots of small bumps up, when suddenly the stock ran away from them, all they could do was shake their heads and fashion stories about another one that got away.
It's gonna be one thing to be able to say "I knew it", just as they said about MSFT, it will be quite another thing to have your account show that you knew it. Because that requires you to take all the ups and downs in stride.
Happy investing all