(FORTUNE Magazine) – BUGS!!! Argh!!!! What are these creepy crawlers doing all over Street Life? I know it may turn off some of our more squeamish readers, but I'm resorting to cheap shock tactics for a reason. Truth is, reading about these cockroaches can help you avoid some serious pain. Let me explain.

You might think that as a Lucent shareholder (I own about 100 shares from the AT&T spinoff) I'd be feeling a little, well, cocky right about now. Remember, LU took a right to the jaw in early January after warning that it would post earnings 18 cents lighter than Wall Street had expected; it said revenues would be short by about a billion. (In other words, real money.) The stock cratered, falling from the mid-70s down to 48. Since then, though, LU has been climbing briskly. It got all the way up to the 70s before settling back in the mid-60s. Yes, LU still isn't where it was pre-dip, but all in all, she's had a pretty decent little comeback.

Still, I'm not whistling "I'm Back in the Saddle Again" quite yet, and here's where Kafka's kritters come in. (Yup, those are cockroaches all right--la cucaracha!) You see, before this January surprise, Lucent had a 100% pristine record when it came to Wall Street. Meaning it had never, ever disappointed the Street. Since being spun off from AT&T in early 1996 for about $7.50 (split adjusted), Lucent had posted record number after record number, joining a select group of stocks, such as Cisco and Microsoft, that Wall Street could absolutely count on. Which made Lucent's fall from grace that much more stunning. So almost as soon as the bad news broke about Lucent, traders began to whisper, "Cockroach." Bad news, goes the Wall Street saw, comes like cockroaches. A company delivers one warning, but like roaches (hey, they can survive a nuclear blast!), you know there are going to be more.

Of course, Lucent management assured Wall Street that the earnings and revenues shortfall was a one-time event. And Lucent CEO Rich McGinn continues to hammer that point. Addressing shareholders last month, he said: "We are not used to falling short of your expectations.... We are committed to regaining that momentum, not by what we say, but by how we perform in the remainder of fiscal 2000."

Which is all well and good. The problem is, so often, so very often, it just doesn't work out that way. Companies just never seem to report one bad bit of news. Time after time after time, they come back days, weeks, months, quarters later and say something to this effect: "You know that bad news we told you about? Well, here's some more of it ..." And the stock, of course, tanks again. Which is why you should exercise extreme caution when buying a stock after a bad-news dip.

Don't believe me? Well, let's go to the videotape, shall we? Do these names ring a bell? How about Bank One? How many times did it go back to the podium to warn? (Let's see if Jamie Dimon can avoid that fate.) Or Waste Management. I've lost track of how many times that one has fessed up. (You would have gotten killed if you had bought after the first dip with those two.) Other proofs of the cockroach theorem? How about Compaq? Or AMD? Or EDS? Or 3M or Hewlett-Packard (although HP seems to have some Teflon in its hide). Intel has been guilty of this sin. So has Gillette. And Gateway and First Union. Even Dell. (Remember in February of '99, Dell's revs were a little soft; then the company guided earnings estimates downward for Q3 and Q4. Now Dell appears to be coming out of its malaise, which, of course, these companies often do.)

An exception would further prove the cockroach rule, but I can't find any exceptions! Actually, there are two companies I can think of that have delivered only one piece of bad news: The above-mentioned Lucent and Procter & Gamble, which warned on March 7 that its earnings growth would come in around 7%, vs. the 13% that Wall Street was expecting. (Oops!) The problem with these two exceptions is that they can't really be counted, because their warnings are still way too recent. In other words, there is still plenty of time for the other shoe to drop. (Watch out, buggies!) The difficulties at both companies--higher costs and pricing pressures at P&G and essentially overheated growth at Lucent--don't suggest quick, one-time hits. More power to 'em if they are, of course. As a Lucent shareholder, I would be outrageously delighted if LU never hit another speed bump this year. But let's just say I'm not counting on it.

LOOSE CHANGE

Hats off to Cisco, now with the biggest market cap in the world. Microsoft had been No. 1 (it succeeded GE) only since 1998.... Hey! Skip Carpenter at DLJ thinks now is the time to quaff some beer stocks. "...Best fundamentals in two to three decades," he writes. Good pricing, solid demographics, high capacity utilization, etc. He likes Bud and Molson, but his fave is Coors. And why not? Stock is way off its high and has a P/E of 18. Plus the weather's heating up....

PUZZLE

I hate crossword puzzles. I'm just not smart enough to do 'em. But I started thinking (dangerous), What if there were a CEO crossword puzzle? Now that would be cool! So I started noodling around with clues. What do you think? I have to get some crossword-puzzle meister to piece it together, but anyway, here's what I've got so far. These are clues for the names of some bigtime CEOs of U.S. companies:

--Can teach this new-tron, new tricks --Knows French --Must like big, strong women --Loves golf, hates Bill --Says "networkin' " like Chuck Yaeger or Jerry West --Should own Oracle instead --Sounds like the University of New Jersey --Must be an alias --Husband of clothier --Trade with him, don't wrestle him

How many can you get? E-mail me your answers; we'll come up with some kind of prize for the ones who get 'em all. And send me your own clues too. Also, is anyone any good at putting these together?

Word on the Street

Here's a fun one. Two IPOs. The same week. One sinner. The other saint. Playboy.com filed to go public in late March--we all know what they do. But another dot-com, Websense, also filed. The latter, says its prospectus, is "a leading provider of employee Internet management products that enable businesses to monitor, report and manage how their employees use the Internet." In other words, a company designed to prevent you from going to Playboy.com. Viva la marketplace! For every problem, a solution, or is it, For every solution, a problem!!!

Check out Street Life every day at fortune.com, and watch Andy Serwer on CNN's In the Money at 11 a.m. EST.