The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

Sotheby's and Ron Baron. Sotheby's and Ron Baron. Why does that sound so familiar?

Now we remember! It's because back in early 1998, Baron started making a big bet on Sotheby's Holdings (BID) stock.

Back in the days when Baron built up a huge position in the stock, it was trading between $15 and $45 and paying 40 cents in dividends per year. At one point, his Sotheby's stock was worth worth more than $1 billion, we figure.

But that was then. By the time Baron started unloading his position in 2002, Sotheby's was at $16 and falling. The 8.8 million shares Baron still owned as of this April -- down from his peak holdings of more than 23 million shares -- are now worth $71 million.

Yes, Hampton real estate isn't the only arena in which Baron got screwed by Sotheby's.

3. If Your PC Freezes Up, Then Just Re-Buddha It

As we have learned over the past few years, salesforce.com has a close affinity with the Dalai Lama -- the spiritual-leader-in-exile of Tibetan Buddhism.

Dilly Dalai-ing

Boy, we wish some of the Dalai Lama's wisdom would rub off on us right now. Then we'd understand what the heck is going on.

See, we're a tad confused by a poster just sent us by salesforce.com, a company that sells customer relation management programs that users tap into over the Internet instead of installing as software on their own computers. "Success. Not software" is salesforce.com's mantra.

The poster, advertising an evening with the Dalai Lama at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall, features a photo of the Dalai Lama in a meditative pose beneath the headline "There Is No Software on the Path to Enlightenment."

Wow. Pretty soon, we suspect, we'll see the pope in full-page ads for the Mach3. The tag line, we assume, will be along the lines of "Get Shaved By the Trinity!"