PALO ALTO, Calif. (CNN/Money) - For two days running earlier this week the most popular article by far on this Web site was Fortune magazine's exclusive preview of Warren Buffett's annual letter to his shareholders.

The Oracle of Omaha went on at some length about derivatives, a real messy topic that even his clear, homespun English didn't completely clean up.

Here's the short version: Derivatives are really complicated financial instruments that nobody totally understands, that corporations use too much and that Buffett thinks are going to be a real problem going forward for the stock market. (click here for Fortune's full story) (See story.)

Journalists have a tried and true method of dealing with messy topics. They ignore them. That's why most of the press coverage surrounding Buffett's annual pronouncement focused not on his comments on derivatives, but rather on what the great man had to say regarding stocks.

That's not so outrageous. After all, Buffett is one of the greatest investors of the last half a century. And really, slavish coverage in glossy national magazines notwithstanding, the statement isn't an exaggeration.

And again, Buffett had a handful of interesting things to say about the market, including that he's been dabbling of late in junk bonds.

But perhaps the most interesting sentence in the whole thing was this one: "Occasionally, successful investing requires inactivity."

Think about that for a second. The man who loves investing like a sumo wrestler loves eating rice is suggesting your best investment strategy of the moment is to do nothing.

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"Despite three years of falling prices, which have significantly improved the attractiveness of common stocks, we still find very few that even mildly interest us," Buffett writes. What he is saying is that despite exhaustive research and three years of market declines, he can't find many stocks he'd like to buy. And that includes not adding to the positions of companies he already owns.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist -- or even a serial acquirer of insurance companies -- to realize that if one of our era's great investors is sitting on the sidelines, perhaps you should be too.

Intel disclosed Thursday that it is narrowing the range of its expected first-quarter revenues from the previously forecast $6.5 billion to $7 billion to the new guesstimated range of $6.6 billion to $6.8 billion. As CNN/Money reported, Intel's shares tumbled nearly 5 percent in after-hours trading.

But consider this. The old midpoint of Intel's (INTC: Research, Estimates) expected range was $6.75 billion. The new midpoint is $6.7 billion. That's a decrease of $50 million, or less than one percent of Intel's expected quarterly revenues. Who really cares?

As part of its complaint filed Thursday against Frank Quattrone, the National Association of Securities Dealers said he "created a structure under which not just investment bankers but also research analysts and sales personnel all reported to him, and all devoted their efforts to securing for him an ever greater share of Silicon Valley's investment banking business."

What's laughable about this accusation is that Quattrone's overlordship of Credit Suisse First Boston's tech research group was no secret. I, for one, wrote about it nearly three years ago. Quattrone wore his total control as a badge of honor.

If he was a criminal for this activity, he was hiding in plain sight. Where was the NASD then? Why are they just now getting around to prosecuting Quattrone? If overseeing research and banking was so bad -- and I'm not saying it's not -- why didn't the NASD stop it from happening before the bubble expanded, and then burst?

Adam Lashinsky is a senior writer for Fortune magazine. Send e-mail to Adam at lashinskysbottomline@yahoo.com.

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