The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street in the Last Year or So

Like the PAX TV network -- which telecasts an hour's worth of "America's Funniest Home Videos" reruns each weeknight -- we at the Five Dumbest Things Research Lab are obsessed with dumb things past.

We know we should forget about them, but we just can't let them go.

So this week, we decided to revisit some of our favorite dumb things over the past year. We call it our "Whatever happened to...?" edition.

1. Amazon's Three-Ring Circles

Back in April we dubbed "first rate" some research published by Merrill Lynch tech strategist Steven Milunovich.

We're still amused.

Milunovich, you may recall, closely studied what Amazon.com (AMZN Quote) calls its "purchase circles" -- semiscientific lists of items that are especially popular purchases among people at a particular organization, or in a particular geographic area.

One of Milunovich's more interesting findings: At software companies such as Oracle (ORCL Quote), Siebel Systems (SEBL Quote) and Veritas (VRTS Quote), people were reading -- or at least buying -- technology books.

Microsoft Management How-To

But at Network Associates (NET Quote), what they were buying was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Body for Life: 12 Weeks to Mental and Physical Strength. All play and no work.

When we returned to Amazon's purchase circles in December, we found that Network Associates had simply been ahead of the curve: These days, nearly all the companies we checked had the latest Harry Potter volume at the tops of their list.

But there were enlightening outliers nonetheless.

Over at Microsoft (MSFT Quote), No. 3 in popularity is The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management: How to Think and Act Like a Microsoft Manager and Take Your Company to the Top.

That's scary. If Microsoft managers feel compelled to buy a book to learn how to think and act like Microsoft managers, they must be one tightly wound bunch of Microsoft managers.

Meanwhile, over at Siebel, one wonders whether employees think the software firm is a rewarding and fulfilling place to spend their careers. No. 2 on their list (behind, of course, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) is Flipping Properties: Generate Instant Cash Profits in Real Estate.