Have you ever been in a small town and wonder what do people do here, it must be boring. Those of us who live in the bigger cities believe there is excitement around us (although we may or may not be involved in it all the time) and the large cities are a host of opportunities. We often bring our this sense to our investment style, who does not want to own Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Telsa?  And there is nothing wrong with doing so, except when you look back at the shares which year over year have produced excellent returns, you come across a name such as Balchem Corp, Mueller Industries and Crane Co. It is rare these companies made the headlines but what they do is year over year produce excellent market returns. John Reese’s column on February 10 highlights the companies. A boring name plus a boring business is guaranteed to keep the professional investors away until the good news compels them to buy in and send the stock price higher. If a company with terrific earnings and strong balance sheet also dull things, it gives you the time to purchase at a discount and when it becomes overpriced you can sell at a healthy profit.
Balchem Corp is a company that makes flavorings, fumigating gases and nutritional additives for animal field. Since 1985 shares have returned more than 26% annually.

Crane trades for 12.6 times trailing 12 month earnings and has grown at 31% long term. Peter Lynch used the P/E divided by its growth ratio to find bargain priced growth stocks.

Mueller Industries makes plumbing, HVAC, and industrial products and is high on the charts if you price/sales ratio favoured by Kenneth Fisher.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, boring can be profitable. Start with a company making profits, if it can do make money through the economic cycles and your portfolio may not show the headline stocks but in terms of assets under administration, they keep rising and for you that is a good thing.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.