and the other is mellanox technology, mlnx.y growing women's retailer, reported a terrific quarter after the close. but it also announced that the ceo and co-founder was retiring from both the company and the board of directors. effective as of the end of the year. in response the stock, it got gutted. falling more than $6, or nearly 17% the next day. since then fran has rebounded a bit, but it's still down big from where it was before the news broke. you know what? i think that makes sense. i know some of you are probably thinking, jim, how important could one person be? the numbers are still the same, right? sure. for now. the fundamental story is still basically intact, right? not so fast. when the ceo announces that he's leaving without providing for any kind of organized transition, that can often be a sign that the fundamentals are about to take a turn and it's not for the better. sometimes the simple fact of losing a great management team can cause a company to lose its way. or make it much more difficult for the busines

now, understand, this is not really about francesca's or mellanox at all, people.m being paranoid here and both companies will be perfectly fine. but as andy grove told us, only the paranoid survive. i'm being paranoid for a reason. because when high-level people left their companies abruptly in the past paranoia's tended to be a pretty darn good strategy. at the very least losing the ceo or the cfo means that the stock has suddenly gotten a whole lot more risky than it was before. let me ask you this. why would you ever want to take that risk when there are so many other companies out there where the top execs aren't leaving? even when losing executives isn't a sign of some kind of hidden chicanery, the fact is when there's uncertainty about leadership at the top it creates serious problems for the rest of the business. let's use some examples here. consider what happened to hewlett-packard after ceo mark hurd resigned back in august of 2010 after a sexual harassment scandal. it's been more than two years, and hp's still trying to get its act together. hurd was re