The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: March 1

5.) Avid Cuts Out

For a company that designs products to help editors, Avid Technology (AVID) sure is having a tough time cutting the crap.

Shares of Avid got eviscerated Monday, falling almost 9%, after the company postponed its fourth quarter earnings announcement originally scheduled for Tuesday due to accounting questions. Avid said it was investigating current and historical accounting treatment "related to bug fixes, upgrades and enhancements to certain products which the company has provided to certain customers."

Avid added that its need to reopen its books arose during the company's "normal review" of its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2012. Prior to Avid's indefinite earnings deferral, analysts expected the company to post fourth-quarter earnings of 12 cents per share.

Um, excuse us guys, but is that the same quote unquote normal review which led to the sudden resignation of your former CEO, chairman and president Gary Greenfield last month? We honestly couldn't tell from the SEC filing.

Well, to be precise, Greenfield is not so much quitting the company as opposed to kicking himself upstairs where he will get paid the same ridiculous $1 million salary for doing even less work. Shares of Avid now trade below $7 a share, or about a quarter of what they were when Greenfield joined the company in December 2007.

Still, we were wondering at the time why Gary gave up his position without a decent explanation, so perhaps now we know.

Or perhaps we don't. We have no idea what to believe from these folks. And we can only imagine that the "certain customers" Avid refers to in its press release have even more questions than us.

That said, to be fair, there are announcements that we can trust from Avid without reservation. Check out the sheer drops in the company's stock nearly every quarter last year and you'll see what they are.

Yep. Negative earnings pre-announcements.

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