“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
Benjamin Franklin wrote that more than two centuries ago. He was my ancestor, and I’ve spent a lifetime studying his advice. Lately those words have been on my mind for a reason I’ll explain in a moment.
But first, let me tell you something about myself that might surprise you.
My favorite subject isn’t the stock market.
It’s history.
Because history teaches you how wealth is actually made.
And it teaches one lesson over and over again that most investors never learn, even after decades in the market…
When a great new technology arrives, the biggest and most reliable fortunes rarely go to the famous names on the front page. They go to the companies that build the plumbing.
Let me show you what I mean.
Go Back to the Railroads
In the 1860s, America set out to connect a continent.
The transcontinental railroad was the moonshot of its day. History remembers the golden spike, the famous photograph, and the names on the front page.
But the durable fortunes weren’t made by the men who cut the ribbon. They were made by the suppliers.
These were the companies that forged the rails… produced the steel… and supplied the timber, tools, and land alongside the track.
While the crowd watched the ceremony, quiet investors were positioning themselves in the businesses that made the whole thing run.
Then Came Electricity
A generation later, it happened again.
When electric light first flickered on, people gathered in the streets to watch.
We remember the inventors: Edison, Westinghouse, and the rest.
But think about what electrification actually required.
Somebody had to generate the power, build the grid, string the copper, manufacture the turbines, and deliver electricity to every home and factory in America.
That buildout − the unglamorous work of powering a nation − created enormous wealth for decades.
Not because electricity was exciting. But because everything else now depended on it.
And Then the Internet
Fast-forward to the 1990s.
I remember it well. I told my readers back then that the Nasdaq would “double, and then double again.”
Everyone was chasing the flashy dot-coms. Most of them are gone now.
But underneath all that noise, a quieter fortune was being built.
Because the internet needed plumbing too. It needed the routers and switches that moved the data, the fiber that carried it, and the hardware that made the whole network hum.
Those “boring” infrastructure companies didn’t get the magazine covers. They just got the profits.
Do you see the pattern yet?
The Same Story, Every Single Time
Three completely different eras. Three completely different technologies. But the same underlying truth.
As the old saying goes, in a gold rush, the surest money isn’t in the gold. It’s in selling the shovels.
I’ve collected dozens of these hard-won market truths over the years in my book The Maxims of Wall Street, now in its 12th edition. And this is one of the most reliable of them all.
History never repeats itself exactly, but, as Mark Twain said, it often rhymes (Page 112).
And we’ve already seen hints that this pattern repeating again.
Where I’m Looking Now
We are living through the arrival of a new technology: artificial general intelligence, or AGI.
In fact, the five biggest tech companies on Earth are collectively pouring nearly $700 billion into AI this year alone.
You don’t spend that kind of money on a passing fad.
And as with the railroads, electrification, and the internet, this latest tech revolution runs on infrastructure.
A handful of unglamorous companies that supply the power, cooling, and hardware behind this buildout have quietly handed early investors extraordinary gains over the past few years.
And it’s not over yet.
You just have to know where to look.
