Just about everything’s been doom and gloom lately, right? And today, yes - it’s a mess too.

After all, Asian and European stocks were both down, not to mention that Lowe’s (LOW) turned in a less-than-inspiring fourth quarter. Man, it makes me want to pull out what little hair I have left.

I’m going to refrain from doing so, however, because I kinda like the Larry Kudlow look I have going and because I think there's a silver lining to all this. 

Enter Sprint Nextel (S).

In case you missed it, the Kansas-based wireless company released its fourth-quarter digits.

Excluding items, it lost a penny share (evidently, it just didn’t get my payment yet - wink), which was $0.02 better than what the Street had been expecting.

Frankly, I think that “beat” was a big positive, especially in this environment, where bad news has become commonplace.

However, I also like to think that a lot of eyes were drawn to the following line in the release as well: “Wireless post-paid churn was 2.16% compared to 2.15% in the third quarter and 2.29% in the year-ago period.”

What’s churn? As far as I’m concerned, it can only refer to what my stomach's been doing because of recent market conditions and the realization that I’ll be age 107.5 before I can afford to retire. 

But seriously, I’m going to refer to a recent USA Today article, which describes “subscriber "churn" as "industry lingo for the number of people who dump service each month.”

So why is the number the company mentioned so good?

Because it could've been a heck of a lot worse, given the competition and the economy.

My point here, folks, is that I think the company deserves some kudos for this. And while I’m on this good-news kick, I may as well point out that Barry West, an officer, picked up 50,000 shares toward the latter part of last year. Of course, I can’t speak for the guy, but I don’t think he’d have done that unless he thought he was going to eventually put some decent jingle in the ol' jeans.

A word of caution: Sprint currently trades south of $5, which means that in spite of its big name, some retail and institutional players may be reluctant to promote the stock or hop aboard.

Hey - have a great rest of the day and a great weekend!