Many things can aggravate someone who is invested in a very cheap stock. This one is particularly irking. For reasons unbeknownst to those rationally running public companies, Leo Apotheker—the 9-month-old CEO of Hewlett Packard—participated in the following dialogue with Sanford Bernstein analyst Tom Sacconagi on June 2, 2011, in regard to the CEO’s assertion that HP can hit a $7/share cash earnings target by 2014.

Tom: On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your confidence level in the $7? How much of incentive comp is tied to it?

Leo: None, eleven.

Just 69 days later on August 11, 2011, Apotheker didn’t even dare to face the Rob Reiner music himself, and on the HP quarterly conference call, sent CFO Catherine A. Lesjak verbally forth to “remove our long-term financial target of a $7 EPS in 2014.”

We enclose this link to relive the Nigel Tufnel moment.