With just a quick glance General Electric (NYSE:GE) and Ford Motor (NYSE:F) appear to be cut from the same cloth. Both were once at the top of their game, but recently, both F and GE stock have been destroyed as the sheer passage of time has made the two companies much less relevant.

When one takes a closer look, however, it becomes clear that General Electric and Ford aren’t exactly carbon copies of one another. One’s wounds were self-inflicted, creating permanent scars. The other’s wounds aren’t so much wounds, but circumstances largely out of that company’s control that were just slow to be addressed.

Perhaps more important though, one is a much better (albeit still speculative) bet than the other right now.

Poor Performance

Neither name has been easy to hold in a long while.

Ford appeared to be marching ahead again as of 2014, when automobile sales were just starting to pick up steam after shrugging off the worst of the 2008 subprime meltdown and subsequent Great Recession. As it turns out though, Ford stock would peak in July of that year, losing nearly 50% of its value since then, and just hitting new multi-year lows this week.

General Electric’s story is no less ugly. Oh, GE stock managed to rally through mid-2016. Since then, though, it’s lost more than 60% of its value, also hitting new multi-year lows this week.

There’s a common element. That is, each company ultimately failed to adapt to the way the world was changing. And as usual, the advent of new technologies was that change.

GE Focused on Wrong Things

For General Electric, the adoption of cloud computing and the internet of things in particular wiped away the advantages of being a large conglomerate. Before, being all things to all people and leveraging your scale was an edge.

Technology made it more efficient to be a small, hyper-focused organization, which was everything GE wasn’t. That’s a big part of the reason relatively new CEO John Flannery has been willing to let go of entire divisions.

That said, General Electric was reportedly also plagued by a corporate culture that was less-than-healthy. Former CEO Jeff Immelt, who was at the helm for a sixteen year stretch that ended in 2017, gets the blame, some of which may even be deserved.

Under Immelt’s oversight, GE was said to have become a “success theater.” That is, only the expression of good news and victories were encouraged. Bad news or challenges were ignored. That may have been a contributing factor in the mathematical mistake that cost the company’s insurance arm an unexpected $11 billion earlier this year.

Innovation also dried up with Immelt in charge.

Ford’s Missteps

Some of the same problems apply to Ford. For instance, it had a chance to become the gold standard of the electric car movement by using the 2011 launch of the all-electric Ford Focus as the springboard into the EV business.

It was content to let a little company called Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) cultivate that market though, despite Ford being in a better financial position to develop the market and leverage its established name.

Ford also largely missed the looming demise of the sedan. Trucks and SUVs now play that role, and for the crowd that wants something smaller, a much smaller compact car is preferred. That’s why the company recently decided to kill off most of its sedans sold in the United States.

One could argue it was trend a major corporation should have seen coming before Ford saw it for itself.

GE Stock, Ford Stock and Odd Similarities

While looking through the lens of hindsight that provides 20/20 vision, it’s easy to pick apart the missteps from each company. The underlying nature of each company’s missteps aren’t the same though.

In the case of General Electric, the success theater Immelt slowly (and largely unconsciously) built has had sixteen years to take root.

Flannery appears to be cultivating a more rational, open corporate culture, though that’s going to be a long-term project. Old habits are hard to break.

In the meantime that may not matter, with the organization in defense mode, mostly looking to shrink its way to success. And, even of the pieces of GE still remaining, it’s still not clear any of them are looking for meaningful ways to embrace technology.

Meanwhile, Ford is finally adjusting for the future of transportation, having never really done anything dramatically dire other than bump into the headwind of ‘peak auto.’

Yes, that future is electric vehicles, but not just battery-powered cars. Indeed, the next era of transportation is more than just about cars. It’s about those cars working with other cars, and the roads, in a way that successfully minimizes congested traffic and shortens drive times.

Ford is now throwing around terms like “Transportation Operating System” and “Transportation Mobility Cloud,” and people know what they mean.

Ford’s even willing to spend $740 million to buy and develop the facilities in Detroit that will let the company make its full foray into the modern mobility arena.

Bottom Line on Ford and GE Stock

To that end, it’s not difficult to determine which of the two stocks is the better bet here. It’s Ford stock. GE stock is still the much bigger question mark.

The fact is, just like GE stock, Ford shares are stuck in a freefall. Right or wrong, a falling knife is a falling knife. You don’t want to try and catch it unless you know exactly what you’re doing and how to do it.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that while Ford shareholders can see a light at the end of the tunnel, revenue is expected to be flat this year, and sales as well as earnings are expected to be flat next year. It’s not exactly the stuff riveting headlines are made of.

There’s a flipside too. Though GE is still on the defensive, reports of divestitures have often been met with cheers. Catching the market in the right mood could spark a reversal of fortune for GE stock, leveraging future news of spinoffs and outright sales of entire arms of the company.

Given what we know and can be reasonably predicted though, Ford still makes more sense as a pick if you just have to own one or the other.

As of this writing, James Brumley held a long position in Ford. You can follow him on Twitter, at @jbrumley.