For most investors, how much a stock's price changes over time is important. This factor can impact your investment portfolio as well as help you compare investment results across sectors and industries. Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks. What if you'd invested in Lam Research (NASDAQ: LRCX) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to LRCX for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today? Lam Research's Business In-Depth With that in mind, let's take a look at Lam Research's main business drivers. Headquartered in Fremont, CA, Lam Research Corporation supplies wafer fabrication equipment and services to the semiconductor industry. In addition, it serves the related markets that rely on semiconductor processes and require production-proven manufacturing capabilities, such as complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor image sensors and micro-electromechanical systems. Lam holds a strong position in deposition and etch, which address numerous critical steps in the fabrication process with the goal of reducing defect rates, improving yields, lowering costs and reducing the processing time. Its core competencies lie in areas such as nanoscale applications enablement, chemistry, plasma and fluidics, and advanced systems engineering. The company caters to ...