Ahh, this takes me back. I started my career around the .com boom, and as a young (clueless) person with suddenly positive cashflow, I invested a bulk of my in

Ahh, this takes me back. I started my career around the .com boom, and as a young (clueless) person with suddenly positive cashflow, I invested a bulk of my initial savings in Global Crossing (again, dumb for many reasons...) My thought process at the time was that there were gobs and gobs of .coms that would flameout (and they did - "fishing licenses online!" anyone?), but that Global Crossing and other telecoms had tons of real, valuable assets in the ground. Of course, I didn't quite do the math on what happens if those assets become devalued when you're sitting on a mountain of debt (and you throw in some fraud for good measure) - "Wow, it really can go to zero and never come back" I discovered. The much bigger downside for me was that since this happened very early in my investment career, I took the wrong lesson and became much too conservative overall, becoming too wary about the stock market at just the wrong time (early '00s). Oh well, hope I can apply that lesson in the next life.