Stock Advice.

One of the basic criteria most investors use when buying stock in a company is the performance of management. Some investors will even go so far as to examine the personalities and decision making strategies of executive running the companies they have equity in.

Here's an example of a company whose management obviously doesn't have anything better to do with their time.

T-Mobile has sent a cease and desist letter to the operators of the Engadget Mobile weblog demanding that they stop using the color fuschia in their logo, saying that it is trademarked and that it causes confusion in the marketplace. Read the article here at Wired News. [link]

I sure wish I could get paid millions of dollars a year just to sit around writing letters demanding that people stop using my color.

In an industry as fast paced, complex, and highly competitive as telecommunications, its a good thing to know that someone out there is paying attention to such vital, do-or-die details like the color pink. They must have taken a class about color as part of their Harvard M.B.A. curriculum.

If I were an owner of T-mobile stock, I would think long and hard about why I even have it.

Although the issue is minor, I take it as an intuitive sign that T-mobile management spends too much time in their offices, and not enough time in the trenches managing the company. I take it as an intuitive sign that they sorely lack marketing knowledge. Consumers care more about such complicated arcane things as GOOD SERVICE, than they do about logo colors. Time that management spends untwisting their panties about logo colors is time they could spend designing and producing better products and services that consumers want.

I can just imagine executive reports to the shareholders: "we added value to your investment because we earned our over-inflated salaries by spending hundreds of thousands on attorneys to defend the logo color."

Another blog article I found on the matter mentions that yes, T-mobile sales are declining and they are struggling for subscribers. What sense does it make, then, to give a rat's ass about the color when all the rats are leaving the ship before it sinks anyway?

I think it definitely would be time to sell.