If you had purchased £1000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95.
With HBOS, earlier this week your £1000 would have been worth £16.50.
£1000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5.
But if you bought £1000 worth of Stella one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium re-cycling plant, you would get £214.
So based on the above statistics the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and re-cycle.