show-me stock
n. A stock that has fallen in price because of the company's recent poor results, and that won't recover until the company shows a string of profits or other positive news.
Etymology
Examples
2000
The bottom line is that Stratos is a show-me stock that may get back off the ground if investors see the company is managing its debt and acquisitions and hitting its targets.
—Scott Adams, “Stratos Global falls to Earth,” National Post (Canada), November 11, 2000
1999
Chief executive Michael MacMillan acknowledged it will take several quarters of ever-improving results to boost the company's sagging share price.

'The market is disappointed with the financial results for the first eight or nine months after the merger,' he said beneath a giant movie screen at the company's new Beach Cinemas complex on Queen St. E.

'We're a show-me stock right now and we have to deliver.'
—Rob Ferguson, “Alliance Atlantis Reassure Holders,” The Toronto Star, September 02, 1999
1986 (earliest)
Cullinet is a 'show me' stock," says David Readerman, an analyst with Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. "Most investors still ask how a company with 29 consecutive up quarters could fall apart so quickly.
—Kathy Porteus, “Despite recent gains, Cullinet must prove itself to skeptics,” Computerworld, November 03, 1986
Notes
This phrase is a play on the unofficial state motto of Missouri: "The Show-Me State." It's no "Live Free or Die" (the state motto of New Hampshire), but it has been the cause of many a scratched head and furrowed brow over the years. Its source is a speech given in 1899 by Missouri Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver:
I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.
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