NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A series of loud thuds echoed across trading floors Wednesday morning as Wall Streeters collectively fell out of their chairs on a stunning announcement from Eastman Kodak: Its second-quarter numbers would not meet expectations.

It was a shocker. Kodak hadn't warned on earnings since, since, since...well, since it said back in January that first-quarter results and results for the full year would be well below analyst expectations.

In fact, if you looked at Kodak's history over the past several years, you'd see that the Rochester, N.Y.-based photographic products company has made something of a habit of both issuing earnings warnings and coming up short on results.

"This is a stock that has lost its way, and has lost it for a long period of time," said Credit Suisse Asset Management managing director Stanley Nabi, who sold out of his Kodak position earlier in the year. "It's in the process of losing its franchise."

Kodak has long been considered a serial warner -- along with companies like Motorola, which warned earlier this month, AT&T, Tupperware, which also warned Tuesday, and a slew of department stores that have a habit of issuing earnings warnings. (For more on Kodak's warning, click here).

"Kodak is definitely a repeat offender; they've been having issues for years," said Joseph Kalinowski, director of research at Puglisi & Co.

Often, serial offenders give out some we-couldn't-control-it excuse for why things are so bad. Dollar strength, back when there was dollar strength, was very popular. Unseasonable rain, or snow, or heat, or cold have become such common excuses that there's a joke on Wall Street about how every recession begins with bad weather.

Now, of course, the popular excuse is SARS, which, for the record, is why Kodak warned. Folks in Asia apparently aren't taking so many pictures on account of it.

"It's SARS, right? It can't be the fact that every cell phone in China comes with a camera built in," said Jeff Matthews, head of the hedge fund Ram Partners. "This is what it was like watching a buggy whip manufacturer go out of business. I'm sure there were buggy whip guys saying that it was hoof and mouth disease that was killing them."

Matthews said that when a company has a history of warning, it's often a sign that its business is getting away from it or, in some cases, just going away.

He said that his eureka moment with Xerox, which he made good money betting against, came when he realized while walking his dog one night that the company's real problem was that nobody was making copies like they used to, and instead were sending documents via e-mail and printing them out.

The problem with such companies, points out Credit Suisse's Nabi, is that they can become value traps. On a screen they look cheap, with low price-to-earnings ratios and high dividend yields. Investors buy them, thinking that they've got a bargain, and then find that they got more, or actually less, than they bargained for.