Back in the day... when the dot-com bubble burst. Someone did the math...
If you had put all the money that you'd invested in Nortel into buying beer. At this point in time, the proceeds from returning the empty beer bottles for the deposit is worth more than what you could possibly get back from the stocks.
But ... as you so brilliantly pointed out ... if you'd instead hidden it in your basement ... well ... you'd still have that money.
Genius😀.
The basement is where its at :OD
That would have been a sore one for an investor in Nortel to read after the fact!
Ouch man, there are so many people hurt out there whilst a small amount creams off the best. Although it can be argued that you really really have to DYOR!
Everything was grey back then. i.e. One could financially state that their product was shipped as soon as it left their dock. So, in theory, they could load an infinite number of transport trailers full of the parts to build a product and park those trailers in the parking lot on Dec 31. Then, on the morning of Jan 1, you could RMA those products stating that they didn't work, needed repairs. Bring it all back into the shop and build the product and ship it. Recognizing the revenue up to a year before you actually made the product. Hypothetically speaking of course.
Always hypothetically speaking!! Hehe.
Yeah, there were so many things that could be gotten away with back in the day. They still can but have to be more clever and hide everything behind a million shell companies!