5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street

The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street: May 11

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:00 GMT

Editor's note: JPMorgan's trading loss disclosure and conference call debacle happened after the deadline for this week's Dumbest, but be sure to check out Dan Freed's screed on Jamie Dimon. Look for Gregg's take next week.

5. Body Gets Bopped ...

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The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: May 4

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:00 GMT

5. Mason's Maturity

No. No. No. Groupon, you've got it backwards! It's the coffee sipper that needs to stay and the beer swiller that needs to go. ...

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The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: April 27

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:00 GMT

5. Chesapeake's New Suit

Chill out dudes! All Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon did was borrow a billion bucks to buy some natural gas wells without telling anybody. There's no need to make a federal case out of it. ...

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The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: April 20

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:00 GMT

5. CME's Block Heads

It wasn't quite a scene from Norma Rae when an assembly of CME traders walked off the job; then again, it wasn't quite normal either. ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: April 13

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:00 GMT

5. Zhongpin's Little Piggies

Here's a twist on an old Wall Street aphorism: Bulls make money, bears make money and really dumb pigs illegally trading pork stocks get their accounts frozen. ...

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The 5 Dumbest 'April Fool's' Quiz Answers

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 10:00 GMT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- We here at the Five Dumbest Lab love April Fools' Day. In fact, it's our favorite holiday because nobody likes to celebrate foolish behavior more than we do.

And the winner of our annual April Fools Day quiz is?

From the Peach State, it's Atlanta's own Michael Patrick. Michael wins a bag full of goodies autographed by Jim Cramer. ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things 'April Fool's' Quiz

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:00 GMT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Happy April Fools' Weekend! We here at The Five Dumbest Lab love April Fools' Day. In fact, it's our favorite holiday because nobody likes to celebrate foolish behavior more than we do.

But before we begin pranking our friends on Wall Street, we leave you with The Five Dumbest Things April Fools Quiz, recapping the silly shenanigans of the first quarter of 2012. Answering correctly could win you a gift package full of autographed Jim Cramer goodies.

Enter by midnight Tuesday, April 3, by e-mailing your answers here with the words "Contest Entry" in the subject line. We'll rerun the column on Friday, April 6, with the answers and the name of the winner. If there is more than one correct entry, we'll have a drawing. ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: March 23

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:00 GMT

5. D&B's China Syndrome

Remember The China Syndrome? The movie based on the premise that a nuclear plant meltdown could burn its way through the earth's core and spread all the way to China? Well, after the recent slew of corporate apologies in China, we here at the Five Dumbest Lab believe a new definition for the term is in order. ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: March 16

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:00 GMT

5. Tiffany's Tiff

Come on Tiffany. Can't you and Swatch simply drop all the lawsuits and settle this silliness over a nice breakfast? ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: March 9

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:00 GMT

5. Overstock Gets Ugly

Remember the Clint Eastwood western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? Well, we here at the Dumbest Lab have a great idea for a sequel entitled: The Dumb, the Ugly and the Overstock. ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: March 2

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:00 GMT

5. Murdoch's Sun Stroke

Poor Rupert Murdoch. Just when the News Corp. CEO thought his phone-hacking headaches were behind him, here comes The Sun. ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Feb. 17

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:00 GMT

5. Apple's China Troubles

Check it out! Chinese authorities are finally getting tough and taking illicit Apple merchandise off the shelves. So let's all stop knocking them as being unmotivated when it comes to property rights, shall we? ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: Feb. 10

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:00 GMT

5. AMR's Envy

Tsk Tsk Tom Horton. Shame on you. Don't you know that airline CEOs in glass cockpits shouldn't throw stones? ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: Feb. 3

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:00 GMT

5. David Bests Bruce

Now that we have reached the denouement of the very dumb battle between Wall Street bigwigs David Einhorn and Bruce Berkowitz, it's time for us to declare a victor. So raise your glasses everybody, and together let's toast Greenlight Capital's Einhorn and his supremely prescient call regarding the real value of St. Joe's property. ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: Jan. 27

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:00 GMT

5. Treehouse Leaves Doubts

Come on Treehouse Foods, give us a break. You are sending us to the nuthouse with all your earnings excuses.

Shares of the food maker, which cooks up noshables ranging from soups to salsas, sank almost 10% last Friday, after it forecast quarterly and full-year results below market expectations. ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Jan. 20

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:00 GMT

5. Straight To Hellas

Surely the Greek protestors were not applying the Socratic method this Tuesday when they flooded the streets of Athens just as international debt inspectors were arriving to determine if the country deserves a bailout.

You see, had the strikers employed the philosopher's decision-making rules then maybe they would have asked the right questions to arrive at a different -- and smarter -- conclusion. ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: Jan. 13

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:00 GMT

5. No Pain, No Gain for Novartis

Sorry Novartis, we don't mind a bit of potluck at a dinner party, but we'll pass when it comes to our pain medications.

The U.S Food and Drug Administration is cautioning consumers about a potential mix-up between powerful prescription painkillers known as opioids and common over-the-counter drugs made at a Novartis manufacturing plant in Lincoln, Nebraska. Novartis issued a recall of the company's over-the-counter drugs on Sunday and Endo Pharmaceuticals, which sells the opioid drugs made at the Novartis facility, has said it is unaware of any injuries resulting from the mix-up. ...

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5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Jan. 6

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:00 GMT

5. MSG's Cable Clash

First their team gets swept by the rival Boston Celtics in the playoffs, then comes the NBA lock-out, and now a cable TV blackout. Come on MSG! Haven't Knicks fans suffered enough already?

Time Warner Cable subscribers have started the new year sans their favorite teams as a result of a spat between the NY-based cable carrier and the owner of MSG networks over the size of a 2012 rate increase. Since Jan. 1, MSG has yanked its sports channels from Time Warner causing fans of the Knicks, Rangers, Islanders, Buffalo Sabres and New Jersey Devils to miss games. ...

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The 10 Dumbest Things on Wall Street in 2011

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:00 GMT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Happy new year Five Dumbest fans, and may the coming year be as inane as the last one!

Yes, it's time to start looking ahead to 2012 and all the foolish wonders it will bring. To be honest, with all the unknowns still hanging over the market, we won't have to skip a beat when we crack open the new calendar.

Lucky for us, there is still a ton of unresolved stupidity out there, like whether Research In Motion or Netflix will still exist by the end of the year. Or, for that matter, if Europe will still be around. ...

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5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Dec. 16

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:00 GMT

5. Diamond Goes Nuts

Say what you want, but in our opinion the recent trading in Diamond Foods has been flat-out nuts.

Hey, if the shell fits! ...

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5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Dec. 2

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:30 GMT

5. Rakoff Rocks

Wall Street banks and the Securities and Exchange Commission may dread Judge Jed, but, quite frankly, we here at the Five Dumbest Lab think Rakoff rocks.

In his latest rebuffing of the financial industry and its primary regulator, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff smacked down a proposed $285 million settlement between Citigroup and the SEC over a $1 billion mortgage-bond deal Monday. The SEC had accused Citigroup of misleading investors in a sale of securities backed by mortgages that it then bet against. Rakoff said that the pact was "neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest" and ordered a trial to be held on July 16, 2012. ...

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The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street Thanksgiving Quiz

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:00 GMT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Happy Thanksgiving to Five Dumbest fans everywhere. We here at The Five Dumbest Lab certainly have a lot to feel thankful for, especially all those turkeys on Wall Street who continue to astonish and amuse us every week.

To show our heartfelt appreciation for all that inanity, we offer you The Five Dumbest Thanksgiving Quiz, recapping Wall Street's biggest flops this fall. Answering correctly could win you an autographed copy of Jim Cramer's Getting Back To Even and a handful of those squishy bulls he throws around the Mad Money set.

Enter by midnight Wednesday, Nov. 30, by emailing your answers here with the words "Contest Entry" in the subject line. We'll rerun the column Friday, Dec. 2, with the answers and the name of the winner. If there is more than one correct entry, we'll have a drawing, of course. ...

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The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: Nov. 18

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:30 GMT

5. Buffett's Bungle

Somebody tell Warren Buffett to check his trade confirmations because apparently he purchased $10.7 billion worth of the wrong company.

Berkshire's Chairman told CNBC Monday that he bought a 5.5% stake in IBM because it has smart employees and sticky customers. Well, judging from what we saw in Illinois this week, the so-called Oracle of Omaha may have been thinking of Cray while buying shares of Big Blue. ...

5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Nov. 11

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:30 GMT

5. Moynihan Gets Byrne'd

Remember the Talking Heads video for Once in a Lifetime? The one where lead singer David Byrne bemoans his mid-life crisis by repeatedly smacking himself in the head while asking "How did I get here?"

Well, as the days go by, and Bank of America unloads non-core assets one after the other from its bloated portfolio, it becomes progressively easier for us to imagine CEO Brian Moynihan behind closed doors flagellating himself in pretty much the same way. ...

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5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Nov. 4

twocents@thestreet.com (TheStreet Staff) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:30 GMT

5. Greedy Nabors

Oil drilling company Nabors Industries gave new meaning to "tone-deaf" this past week.

Last Friday, after the market close -- i.e., the exact time when companies release news they don't want people to see -- Nabors announced that its long-time CEO Eugene Isenberg would be stepping down. His "parting" gift -- he remains chairman of the company and his right hand man was named CEO (think Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev in Russia) -- was a $100 million "contingent liability" payment. ...

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5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Oct. 28

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:30 GMT

5. McRib's Return

There are no ribs in a McRib. Not even one. But false advertising is not the bone we have to pick with McDonald's over its boneless barbecue pork sandwich.

No, our beef with McDonald's revolves around the shenanigans the company plays with McRib supply. And Monday's announcement that the McRib will be available at all U.S. locations through Nov. 14, instead of scattered select stores does nothing to alleviate our anger that the company continues to stockpile that succulent sandwich in the worst possible way. ...

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5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Oct. 21

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 09:30 GMT

5. RIM's Fine Line

With all deference to Spinal Tap vocalist David St. Hubbins, the line between "stupid and clever" is not "fine" at all. In fact, it's pretty fat. And based on how the folks at Apple and Research In Motion spent the past week, you can see how fat it is.

Let's start with the clever side, shall we? ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Oct. 14

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:08 GMT

5. Reed's Misdirection

Somebody get our good friend Reed Hastings over at Netflix a compass because it's clear he has no idea which direction he is taking the movie rental service.

Yes, barely a month after announcing his Solomonesque plan to split the company in half, the company's less-than-wise CEO revealed on Monday that Netflix has decided to keep its DVD-by-mail and its streaming services under the Netflix umbrella. In September, Hastings came under heavy fire for the not-so-sagacious move of renaming its DVD business "Qwikster". ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Oct. 7

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:00 GMT

5. Yahoo's Freaky Friday

There's a chance that Yahoo will soon become "Ma-hoo." And while we may be laughing out loud at the very idea, we're actually not kidding either

Speaking last Friday afternoon at an event at Stanford University, Jack Ma, the founder and CEO of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, said he's talked with Yahoo as well as others about potentially buying the troubled Internet giant. Yahoo owns a sizable stake of Alibaba Group, which owns multiple Internet businesses in China. Yahoo shares rose close to 3% Monday to $13.60 on the news, bringing its market-cap to just over $17 billion. Reports of a potential rekindling of interest from Microsoft Wednesday pushed the stock even higher later in the week, lifting Yahoo's market-cap to nearly $20 billion. ...

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The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Sept. 30

twocents@thestreet.com (Gregg Greenberg) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:00 GMT

5. Oswald's Comedy Act

Who said Germans don't have a sense of humor? We've been listening to ex-UBS CEO Oswald Gruebel for the past week and we think he is simply hilarious!

Shares of beleaguered Swiss bank UBS spiked 8% on Monday as the company named Sergio Ermotti as interim CEO after a $2.3 billion rogue trading loss forced the resignation of Oswald Gruebel over the weekend. Gruebel was so confident that he would stay on as the bank's leader that he chuckled last Wednesday when a Reuters reporter asked if he still had the board's support, replying, "Yes. Always." ...

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