The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

Second, Red Hat also told analysts it's in conversations with the Securities and Exchange Commission about something that may result in additional changes to its annual report for the year ended Feb. 29.

News of the restatement and the possible additional disclosures sent Red Hat's stock dropping 23% Tuesday, on astounding volume.

Investors seem to expect the worst from Red Hat. And on that front, the company sure doesn't disappoint.

3. The Mouth of the Southwest

Speaking of executive departures, Southwest Airlines (LUV Quote) CEO Jim Parker, an 18-year veteran of the carrier, announced Thursday that he is retiring from his post, and from the company's board, "for personal reasons."

The decision just happened to come as the longtime Wall Street airline favorite posted an unusual quarterly earnings shortfall.

The airline industry, remember, is about as nerve-calming to investors as the software business. So would all you executives quit departing for personal reasons, or any reasons at all? We know this is just innocent behavior here, but you're making us nervous.

4. A Brain-Busting Work of Staggering Length

We always knew Google was useful for searching the vast reaches of the Internet. But we didn't know we would need a search engine to cut through some of the huge sentences in its regulatory documents.

Prospectuses are notorious for their impenetrable language. Still, sifting through Google's Second Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation, we found it wasn't just filled with the usual gobbledygook. It's full of extraordinary gobbledygook.

At the center of it all, we found one mind-boggling sentence -- an utterly incomprehensible string of descriptions, conjectures and exceptions that lasted for 594 words.

One sentence! 594 words! Why, we've heard graduation speeches shorter than that.

Google Boggles Try this in the search field

We won't print it all here, this sentence appearing under the heading of Special Mandatory Conversion, but just so you know: Between the first capital letter and the final period we found four mentions of "original issue price," six ifs, seven convertibles, 11 equity financings, 17 suches, 24 preferreds and 32 series.