Mining stocks can sometimes amplify the volatile movements of precious metals they gather from the earth, especially when there are dramatic movements in theprice of the commodity itself combined with no reduction or even increases in the costs associated with mining the commodities themselves.
It was also in the late 90s that everyone made their oligos in-house with personal synthesizers, then followed the great reduction in price battles, local synthesis closed down, major city players got purchased and eventually only 6-10 very large providers remain with very low margins and production based business models.