When did boring become interesting again?

By Juliet Schooling Latter on 19 October 2026 in Equities

Bonds. Railroads and infrastructure. Construction and cables. Hardly the investments likely to dominate your social media feed.

In a market increasingly captivated by artificial intelligence and the companies building the technology of tomorrow, some fund managers are finding opportunities in rather less exciting places.

AI or railroads?

Aitken Ross, manager of the Liontrust Sustainable Future Monthly Income Bond fund, is well aware that fixed income has an image problem, and for a while, he could understand the lack of enthusiasm: “From 2019 to 2021, government bond yields were low. I can get why people weren’t interested in bonds. But now, we’re at some record highs in bond yields and people are starting to get a little more interested.”

For Aitken, the appeal is precisely that investors can now find attractive yields without necessarily having to venture into the most exciting, or risky, parts of the market. That becomes particularly interesting when Aitken looks at artificial intelligence. The vast sums required to build data centres and other AI infrastructure will need to be financed somehow, and Aitken expects a significant amount of debt issuance from companies involved in the build-out.

For a bond investor, more debt supply matters. If companies continue issuing huge amounts of bonds, existing bond prices can come under pressure as investors are given more choice about where to put their money. So rather than feeling compelled to lend money to the companies at the centre of the AI boom, Aitken is finding opportunities somewhere considerably more established.

“The railroads today are giving you a high-quality, stable level of cash generation, relative to an industry [AI infrastructure] that’s at an evolutionary level and it’s going to have to issue a huge amount of debt. Someone’s going to have to pay for that. It’s not going to be us. Because we’re investing in the railroads.”

The “natural beauty” of predictable income

Richard Parfect, co-manager of the VT Momentum Diversified Income fund, is another manager who can see the attraction of an investment that doesn’t necessarily make for an exciting story.

One example is International Public Partnerships (INPP), a listed infrastructure investment company. Its portfolio includes long-term infrastructure projects, where revenues can be contracted over many years.

There isn’t necessarily a transformational growth story behind an investment like this. For an income investor, that’s not really the point. Predictability can be an attraction in itself.

When construction becomes interesting

For Georgina Brittain, manager of the JPMorgan UK Small Cap Growth & Income Trust, one of the supposedly boring companies in her portfolio is Galliford Try. Construction, she admits, isn’t an industry that has historically inspired much enthusiasm from investors.

But Georgina believes the businesses that have survived that difficult period have changed.

Galliford Try, she says, has plenty of cash on its balance sheet, providing a buffer if something does go wrong. But it’s the company’s exposure to infrastructure that makes the story more interesting. A significant part of its work is in areas such as water and roads, where Georgina says there is a pipeline of projects stretching seven or eight years into the future and much of the spending is government-backed.

On the surface, a construction company may not sound particularly exciting. But, as Georgina puts it, once you look “under the bonnet”, the investment case can become much more interesting.

Even innovation can be boring

Graeme Bencke, manager of the WS Amati Global Innovation fund, might seem like an unlikely addition to an article about boring investments.

“It sounds like a really dull business,” he said. “But their market is just exploding.”

As factories become more automated, Graeme argues they will need more wiring and terminals to connect sensors, machines and other equipment — with an increasing amount of that connectivity also becoming wireless.

Another example is even more fundamental: cables.

The transition towards more distributed sources of electricity, including wind and solar, means power increasingly needs to travel between different places. Graeme points to Italian cable manufacturer Prysmian, a major producer of the high-voltage cables required to move that electricity.

The technology changing the world might be exciting. The wiring connecting it all together is rather less glamorous. But you can’t have one without the other.

Boring doesn’t equal bad

None of this means investors should suddenly fill their portfolios with railroads and cables. But it highlights an interesting contrast in today’s market. Some of the businesses attracting the most attention are promising enormous change. Meanwhile, companies providing predictable income, established infrastructure or the less glamorous technology required to make that change possible can receive considerably less attention.

Sometimes the most exciting investment story isn’t necessarily where you’ll find the most interesting investment.