Early this decade some investing pundits were predicting a new “roaring twenties.”

The one a century ago also started with a pandemic followed by a wave of innovation, risk-taking and enormous stock-market wealth. So far, so good.

Now another echo of that boom is giving exuberant investors enough rope to hang themselves: investments that can go to zero.

Of course any stock could do that, but you’d have to be truly reckless to lose every penny in a diversified portfolio. And when it comes to funds, mainly rich people allowed to invest in ones that occasionally go bust.

But a coming wave of leveraged products make that possible for the little guy by focusing on individual, usually volatile companies. We just got a preview from London.

Remember how shareholders of Advanced Micro Devices celebrated a week ago following its deal with OpenAI? Well it was awful news for owners of a GraniteShares exchange traded product that was three-times short the stock. Their announcement:

“As a result, and in accordance with the Terms and Conditions of the ETP, an Early Redemption Event has occurred. The Value per ETP Security has been determined as USD 0.0000.”

Four decimal places was a nice touch. GraniteShares recently filed to list similar U.S. products.

Funds that represent similarly leveraged returns on a basket of stocks have been available stateside for a while. For example, a triple inverse semiconductor index fund also fell sharply that day and is down by a whopping 99.99999% since inception. That still isn’t zero, and it took years.

When stocks crashed in 1929, many investors were ruined because they were allowed to buy on 10% margin—putting down a tenth of a stock’s price with the rest borrowed. And highflying funds from that era known as investment trusts had significant borrowings too, often buying other trusts that had their own borrowings. Owners were wiped out by what seemed like diversified funds.

Americans already lose lots of money with leveraged products these days because of decay and hidden costs. Basing them on more volatile individual stocks means more zeroes in investors’ future.

Other products are coming that frequently end in a goose egg: U.S. investors are getting access to perpetual futures for cryptocurrencies that could have as much as 100 times leverage. Friday’s bitcoin “perp” meltdown saw accounts wiped out and even winning traders picking up part of the tab.

But that’s crypto. Inserting the possibility of total loss into something that looks like a stock mutual fund at a time of maximum retail-investor excitement is taking the 1920s parallels to a new level.

No risk, no reward? Not necessarily.

Friday’s Trash Crash was a reminder of one of the weirder and more-rewarding investing hacks: Stocks that help you sleep at night can also make you wealthier in the long run.

It seems like common sense that the greatest stock-market riches are reaped by those who throw caution to the wind by investing in the sort of companies avoided by widows and orphans—think Amazon, Netflix or Nvidia before they became blue-chips.

That common sense conclusion also forms the bedrock of academic-finance theory. The capital asset pricing model predicts a direct relationship between risk and reward.

But real world results show that often isn’t true. According to the findings of the low-volatility anomaly, dull stocks have beaten the market in the long run, and with less choppiness.

Just not during exuberant stretches like the six months between April’s Liberation Day low and last Thursday. A basket of meme stocks tracked by Goldman Sachs rallied 124% and one of speculative quantum-computing stocks gained 316%. On the opposite end of the performance spectrum, boring consumer-staples stocks rose just 1.3%.

During Friday’s market tumble, though, the first were last and the last first. Palantir, up 140% during the preceding stretch, retreated 7%. Rigetti Computing, which had surged 510%, fell by almost 7%. Meanwhile, Colgate-Palmolive, Altria, Campbell’s and General Mills shares all rose.

The S&P 500 High Beta Index, made up of the benchmark’s most-volatile stocks, had risen nearly 70% during the six-month span and fell almost 5% on Friday. The S&P 500 Low Volatility Index, the yin to high-beta’s yang, had barely managed a 7% gain during the preceding six months but rose slightly amid Friday’s carnage.

A single day’s reversal proves nothing, but the impressive long-term performance of those dull stocks might. And fewer white-knuckle moments also result in higher real-world returns since investors are less likely to get spooked into panic selling.

The problem is that low-volatility stocks tend to attract investors during downturns. High beta was a huge winner during the tech bubble and also has been during much of the retail investing boom since the pandemic.

One reason the raciest stocks get more appealing right when they get more expensive, like now, is that savers have an irrational preference for lottery tickets. Seeing huge payoffs, they overpay for the possibility of it happening again.

The Nobel Prize-winning economists who said decades ago that risk equals reward missed such psychological factors and also never accounted for trading frictions. Actively betting against stocks with nosebleed valuations like Rigetti or Palantir by selling them short is risky and expensive. That helps them keep rising for a surprisingly long time.

For investors wary of market froth who want to stay invested, this might be one of those times when boring is beautiful.