If you had purchased £1,000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95.

If you had purchased £1,000 of HBOS shares earlier this week your £1,000 would have been worth £16.50

If you had invested £1, 000 in XL Leisure it would now be worth less than £5

But if you had bought £1000 worth of Stella Artois 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.