Editor’s Note: Investment history is filled with examples of once-dominant companies that imploded overnight, much like the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. Investors in these Wall Street debacles lost their shirts…before they could cry out (like that radio reporter at Lakehurst): “Oh, the humanity!”

Below, I take you through four case studies of hubris and ruin. Ignore these lessons at your peril.

Tesla

Daily headlines depict the accelerating brand destruction of electric vehicle maker Tesla (NSDQ: TSLA).

CEO Elon Musk’s embrace of far-right politics has alienated customers and investors. Sales of Tesla vehicles are plunging in key markets around the world. Violent protests are engulfing dealerships, while owners face vandalism and harassment.

Read This Story: The Perils of Investing in a Cult of Personality

Since peaking on December 17, Tesla’s stock price has plunged about 50%, slashing the company’s market cap by about $800 billion (see the following chart, with data as of market close Friday, March 14).

Analysts have been downgrading Tesla and drastically lowering their long-term price forecasts. Notably, on March 14, Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) analyst Colin Langan cut his Tesla price target to $130 from $135 and kept his “Sell” rating on shares. Tesla closed higher during last Friday’s trading session but shares nonetheless lost more than 5% for the full week.

Elon Musk, Tesla’s biggest shareholder, has heavily leveraged his TSLA holdings as collateral for loans. Now, with the company’s debt piling up and its value cratering, a continued stock slide could have bankers pounding on his door. At this rate, Musk might need to make Mars his official forwarding address.

Bear Stearns

We’re all sadly familiar with the tragedy of Bear Stearns, the investment house that became overexposed in the market for securitized subprime mortgages.

In March 2008, Bear Stearns’ stock plummeted from its 52-week high of $133.20 per share, traded before the crisis, to an astonishing low of $2.00, on a $236.2 million buyout offer from JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).

In January 2010, new owner JPMorgan discontinued using the Bear Stearns name, which had become synonymous with greed and reckless mismanagement. The collapse of this once-venerable Wall Street name precipitated the Great Financial Meltdown of 2008, the ramifications of which still reverberate to this day.

While Bear Stearns was in a steep dive in March 2008, several pundits on financial television were actually telling investors that Bear Stearns was fine and they shouldn’t take out their money. If you want to lose money in a hurry, follow the advice of the hucksters and blowhards on financial television. Take a look at the following chart:

Coleco Industries

During the technology boom of the early 1980s, this maker of children’s plastic swimming pools diversified into bargain-priced video games and home computers. It also came out with an oddity called the Cabbage Patch doll.

Maybe you remember: Cabbage Patch dolls became a craze. In August 1982, the company’s stock was languishing at about $7 a share. By June 1983, it was trading at a whopping $65 a share.

When the fad for Cabbage Patch dolls faded, Coleco’s stock fell off a cliff. First, shares plunged more than 50% from June to August 1983. By March 1984, Coleco stock had plummeted to roughly $10 a share. In 1988, the company filed for bankruptcy.

Beware of the madness of crowds. Smooth sounding assurances from TV pundits or corporate management can be either empty rhetoric or outright lies. Also beware of investment fads. The wild popularity of Cabbage Patch dolls reminds me of the Dutch Tulip Mania of the 17th century, which ended badly for all concerned.

Enron

Once touted as an exemplar of American enterprise, this energy company was number seven on the Fortune 500. It seemed too big to fail; a huge entity that could never possibly run out of money. But it did…and fast.

Enron’s stock price hit a high of $90 per share in mid-2000. By the end of November 2001, the price had plummeted to less than $1 a share, causing shareholders to lose nearly $11 billion.

The company went bankrupt in December 2001. A complex web of egregious accounting irregularities and financial abuses came to light, leading to federal investigations, regulatory reforms, and prison sentences for some of the company’s management.

As Enron was going down in flames, its top executives were telling employees that the company was still in good shape and they should keep buying the stock for their retirement accounts and nest eggs. Thousands of loyal Enron workers were financially wiped out.

The treachery of Enron’s management toward its own employees reminds me of a fact-checking rule that I followed, back when I worked as a daily newspaperman: “If your mother says she loves you, go check it out.”

Bulletproof your portfolio…

As I’ve just explained, Wall Street never runs out of wild investing fads. Crypto, meme stocks, flashy trading gimmicks…each one dangles the promise of easy money, only to leave you at the mercy of gut-wrenching volatility.

Sound more like gambling than investing? That’s because it is. But here’s the good news: you don’t have to play.

Instead, you can take a smarter, steadier path to real, lasting wealth. My colleague Nathan Slaughter has uncovered a select group of stocks so strong, so reliable, and so rewarding that he believes they can thrive in any market. He calls them Bulletproof Buys. Click here to see why.