While everyone’s obsessing over AI and whether ChatGPT will steal their job, there’s a quiet revolution happening in the most unlikely place: dollar stores. Specifically, Dollar General just handed Nvidia its lunch money with a 74% gain in 2025, making the chip giant’s “measly” 36% look like amateur hour.
Yeah, you read that right. The place where you buy off-brand cereal and questionable phone chargers is absolutely demolishing the supposed king of tech. It’s like watching your grandma beat a Formula 1 driver in a street race.
Why Dollar General Is Having Its Main Character Moment
Here’s the thing about recessions (or recession vibes): people get real creative with their spending. When your grocery bill starts looking like a mortgage payment, suddenly that dollar store doesn’t seem so sketchy anymore. Dollar General figured this out and decided to actually get good at being a business.
Their Q3 numbers were chef’s kiss perfect: sales jumped 4.6% to $10.6 billion, and earnings shot up 44% to $1.28 per share. That’s not just beating expectations – that’s dunking on them from the free-throw line.
The secret sauce? They finally solved their shoplifting problem (apparently having actual security helps, who knew?), and people are trading down from Target to save a few bucks. When inflation makes everything expensive, cheap becomes the new luxury.
The Expansion Game
Dollar General isn’t just sitting pretty – they’re going full empire mode. They opened 196 new stores in Q3 alone and renovated over 1,100 locations. With 20,900+ stores, they’re basically the Starbucks of discount retail, except instead of overpriced coffee, they’re selling you toilet paper and hope.
Their strategy is brilliant in its simplicity: be everywhere, sell everything cheap, and watch people choose convenience over brand loyalty. It’s working so well that even Dollar Tree (their main competitor) is up 63% this year, though they’re still playing catch-up.
The Reality Check
Look, this isn’t about Dollar General being the next Amazon. It’s about recognizing that sometimes the most boring investments are the smartest ones. While tech bros argue about which AI will achieve consciousness first, Dollar General is quietly printing money by selling $1 snacks to people who can’t afford $8 Whole Foods granola bars.
The company’s trading at a reasonable forward P/E, management expects low-teens earnings growth through 2026, and they’re adding 450+ stores annually. In a world where everything feels overvalued and overhyped, Dollar General is refreshingly… normal.
So while Nvidia figures out its next move in the AI chess game, Dollar General is playing checkers and winning. Sometimes the best investment strategy isn’t about finding the next big thing – it’s about betting on the things people actually need when times get tough.
And right now, that’s cheap stuff. Lots of it.