Monday, Sun Microsystems changed its symbol to JAVA. In their press release Sun said -

The Java brand and technology have evolved to be among the most pervasive on the internet, yielding extraordinary awareness for Sun and opportunity for the community that leverages it,” said Jonathan Schwartz, president and CEO of Sun. “More than a billion people across the globe, representing nearly every demographic, market and industry, rely upon Java’s security, innovation and value to connect them with opportunity. That awareness positions Sun, and now our investor base, for the future.”

What a bunch of crap! Do you really believe that a new stock symbol will allow you or them to leverage anything? I don’t. What I do believe is that thousands if not millions or “billions” of the “investor base” are now confused when they go to buy or sell the stock.

In general, I like fun stock symbols and have a few thousand rolling around in my head. It’s obviously helpful to have an acronym that helps investors remember the ticker but changing them is not without its risk of confusion. For example, just ask long time investors what the symbol for Philip Morris is and they’ll immediately tell you “MO” - sometimes even “Big MO.” Of course that’s a trick question because despite spending a lot of money on rebranding - many investors will struggle to tell you the real name of the company with the symbol “MO” which happens to be Altria.

My opinion is that if you really want to rebrand a company, you need to change both the name and the symbol at the same time. If you don’t, the symbol change will likely be a giant waste of time and money that does nothing but confuse long-standing shareholders.