Boring is Beautiful (and profitable)
Sexy businesses entertain; boring ones pay the bills.
We all know that not everything that shines is gold. The reverse is also true: not everything dull is worthless.
Dull can, in fact, be golden.
Enter boring businesses: grey, monotonous and unglamorous. They are the backbone of the economy, overlooked precisely because nobody wants to talk about them at parties. They do essential work that most people find about as exciting as watching concrete cure.
In an attempt to focus my writing, I’ll be hunting for and profiling publicly-listed boring companies. This shouldn’t be interpreted as saying the big, headline-grabbing names should be ignored. There’s plenty of money to be made there. But anybody can find those.
Our brains on stories
All stocks have stories attached to them, whether we realize it or not. The story is either widely told and part of the zeitgeist, or hidden, waiting to be discovered. But there’s a third possibility; one that gets investors into trouble: the story we tell ourselves that isn’t true. Since nature abhors a vacuum, if we don’t find the real story, we fill in the blanks with false narratives.
Because humans love stories.
Our brains are wired to think in narratives, not facts, figures, or probabilities.
Stories give us scaffolding on which to hang our thoughts, emotions, hopes and dreams. If a story appears even slightly logical, supporting facts become less crucial. The more interesting, novel, scary, or funny the story, the more easily we process, remember, and empathize with it.
We encode experiences as narratives, as sequences of linked events: “A” happened, therefore “B” happened, which led to “C”... and so on. This mental model helps us anticipate outcomes, predict threats and spot opportunities. Storytelling hijacks that same framework, tapping into our most basic emotions. Early humans shared experiences as cautionary tales, passing on vital knowledge and building group cohesion long before writing existed.
Compelling stories trigger neurochemicals like dopamine (which boosts attention and arousal) and oxytocin (which enhances empathy and social bonding). Hearing vivid, sensory-rich narratives activates the same brain regions as if we were experiencing the events ourselves. It’s far easier to picture yourself as the protagonist than to absorb a spreadsheet.
Stories are persuasive, relatable, and easily shared, and they crowd out critical thinking. It’s not that the story-brain ignores facts; it just has less bandwidth for them. Narrative wins every time.
This pull toward stories doesn’t just shape how we see the world. It shapes markets.
Every company has its story
Our brains work differently when money is involved. They operate on a more primal level, easily falling prey to fear and greed.
Sensational stories of riches catch our attention instantly and stick to memory, making them easy to amplify. What do you think gets CNBC better ratings: an interview with a CEO promising to revolutionize humanity, or a deep dive into WESCO International’s electrical distribution margins? One story writes itself. The other requires you to care about wire gauges.
Consider that people love to brag about their crypto trades or biotech bets, but nobody flexes about dividend income from a regional parking lot operator.
Both can make you money. But as a boring person myself, I’m drawn to the latter.
We all love being “in” on the story, which usually means holding the same opinion as everyone else. It’s reputationally risky to think differently. If Nvidia is ripping higher and you’re sitting there with shares of a septic tank manufacturer, you’re a fool. But if Nvidia tanks and you own shares, your losses are socially acceptable; you are in good company. In markets, as in life, sexy failures beat boring gains.
Stories draw in talent
Talented people want to work in sexy, world-changing fields. Rarely will you find a child dreaming of becoming a plumbing parts distributor. This creates a talent gap in unsexy industries, which lowers competitive pressure. Boring companies that execute well can quietly come to dominate their markets while everyone else chases the next moonshot.
Stories create trends
Trends are born from stories. The current AI revolution didn’t appear out of nowhere; it emerged from the narratives that CEOs, entrepreneurs, and investors tell us about how this technology will transform every corner of our lives. We extrapolate those stories far into the future and imagine making generational wealth if we get in early. This triggers exactly the right cocktail of emotions to hijack our decision-making.
Don’t get me wrong: there’s serious money to be made riding hot, universal trends usually at the frontier of developing technology. But those are crowded trades. That’s where the sharpest minds and deepest pools of capital hunt.
I’d rather fish where there’s less competition, which tends to be dull. I’ll leave the sexy opportunities to the sexy people.
Boring Alpha
Owning, investing in, or running boring businesses won’t make you popular at dinner parties. But it can make you a lot of money.
Boring businesses are essential. We would all notice, and suffer, if cement production stopped, trash collection ceased, or industrial parts suddenly became unavailable. These companies may not revolutionize the world, but they keep the current one running. They tend to operate in critical markets with inelastic demand, high switching costs, and high barriers to entry. They’re less subject to consumer whims and the fashion cycle of innovation.
This means boring businesses can be remarkably stable, generate predictable cash flows, and become compounding machines over time. They also have something many high-flying startups lack: longevity.
Boring doesn’t mean risk-free. But boring can mean quiet compounding over years or decades which is a proven way to build wealth.
As any parent knows, young kids are noisy, chaotic, even destructive; constant horsing around, screaming, fighting. But silence? Silence means they’re up to something. Silence is suspicious. Silence means, pay attention.
It’s the same thing for investors. We want to find the quietest parts of the market.
I’m a nerd; I find everything interesting, especially the mundane; and I don’t mind looking like a fool. If you can tolerate the boredom, you’re welcome to look over my shoulder: my research, my mistakes, my philosophy. This is my quest for profitable boredom: digging for gold covered in mud.