If you had bought $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.
With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1,000.00.
With Worldcom, you would have less than $5.00 left.
If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the 10-cent deposit, you would have $214.00.
Based on the above, my current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. This is my new retirement program, I call it my 401-Keg program.