RJR is top dog in the junkyard.

• Position: RJR Nabisco stock

Millions are addicted to cigarettes, but the number hooked on RJR Nabisco stock declined sharply after the KKR leveraged buyout in '89. Still, anyone who hung on did all right.

"In general, people who have stuck with the company, as they always have in the past, have come out OK," says Hayden Kepley, vice president of Dean Witter Reynolds in Winston-Salem.

Suppose an investor sold $10,000 of RJR stock at the buyout price of $89 in April 89. If he'd then bought Fidelity Magellan, often considered the best mutual fund of the past decade, the 10 grand would have grown by only about 3 percent to $10,332 by early February, according to Charlotte stockbroker Doug Burns. Had the investor parked his money in a garden-variety certificate of deposit and cashed out in early February, he'd have $11,685 - an annual gain of about 8 percent.

But if he'd bought $10,000 worth of RJR Payment-in-Kind subordinated debentures - a financial euphemism for junk bonds, paying 15 percent...