If you had bought $1000.00 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00. With Enron, you would have $16.50 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 Stella (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the bottles for a 5c deposit, you would have $107.00.
Based on the above, current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.