Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Sept. 4

Boo-Hoo at Yahoo!

Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) CEO Carol Bartz is telling employees to get over the Microsoft(MSFT Quote) search deal and get back to work. For his part, billionaire investor Carl Icahn is well ahead of her.

A less than cheerful memo from Bartz was published Tuesday in Dow Jones' All Things Digital blog urging employees to stop debating the merits of Microsoft's revenue-sharing agreement and "focus" on their jobs. The release of Bartz's missive could not have come at a worse time, appearing a day after Icahn's public admission that he recently sold about 13 million shares in the company.

Yes, Carl and Carol really did Yahoo! this week.

Chief Executive Bartz commands her troops in the strongly worded memo, originally sent in mid-August, to "get out of the sugar low -- we have work to do. Stop staring at our navels, stop arguing with each other. Stop debate, debate, debate, and let's focus on the competition."

(Begin humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic here...)

"Let's focus on a great Yahoo!. Our average user is just trying to get through the day ... looking to find out what's going on in the big world and their own world," Bartz continues. "They want their Internet site to be great, and to work."

Yes, we can, Carol! Yes, we can!

Alas, Icahn cannot. But instead of complaining, he is voting with his shares. In a filing on Monday, Icahn Capital said it has reduced its stake in Yahoo! to 4.48%, down from 5.38% as of June 30.

Icahn began investing in Yahoo! last year when Microsoft was trying to buy the entire company, back when the stock was in the mid-$20s. His recent sales were at prices between $14.75 and $14.92. Yahoo! shares closed Tuesday at $14.18, around 17% below where the search deal was struck in late July.

The filing goes on to say that Icahn is unloading shares to better balance his technology portfolio and not because of any doubts in the "wisdom of the Microsoft-Yahoo search transaction" or the performance of Bartz herself.

We don't need a memo to know whether that's debatable.

Dumb-o-meter score: 95 -- Unlike Yahoo! employees, Carl Icahn doesn't shed tears. He sheds shares.