Morgan Housel: Naked Brands Interview Series

Author: David Perell (interviewing Morgan Housel) URL: https://www.perell.com/blog/morgan-housel One-line: Part of the Naked Brands interview series — Housel on how free-flowing information changed trust in finance, why content builds permanent capital, and the three kinds of writing.

Key claims

• A generational shift in information access. Housel’s generation grew up expecting information to be free and readily available — “an order of magnitude more information than my parents” — which reshaped how trust is built.
• You can’t hide misbehavior anymore. Brands now know “customers really care about how they treat their employees, how they treat their suppliers, what their products are made of,” because information is no longer hidden.
• Vanguard’s exponential moment. It plodded for ~20 years, then ~15 years ago “something just clicked” — as investors gained the ability to compare fees and talk to each other online, money flooded in.
• Content is the “Chef’s Table” of asset management — showing how the product is sourced and made builds subconscious trust you can’t get from a brand like Merrill Lynch.
• Finance thrives online because money is emotional and markets are, by definition, people disagreeing. “There could never be an active Twitter community around changing your oil.”
• Buffett and Marks were the forerunners. They used communication “as a bridge towards trust”; that trust gave them permanent capital, “and permanent capital gave them a massive financial advantage over other investors.”
• Three kinds of writing. (1) Give new information — hard, since Bloomberg/Reuters win. (2) Have an opinion on it — interesting but not that useful. (3) Change how people think — “add context… Have you thought about it in this different way?” — the type Housel thinks more people should focus on.

Notable quotes

“Buffett and Marks used content to instill trust, trust gave them permanent capital, and permanent capital gave them a massive financial advantage over other investors.”

“Pretty much the definition of a market is people disagreeing with each other.”

“As quality increases and ceases to be a differentiating factor between products, companies increasingly begin to sell identity.”

“Take what information is out there and add context to it. Say, look, this isn’t necessarily my opinion and this is not new information, but here’s what’s going on in the world. Have you thought about it in this different way?”

How it connects

• Morgan Housel / David Perell — interviewee and interviewer.
• Naked Brands — the parent series; trust-and-transparency as the new competitive edge.
• Vanguard — the case study in information access flipping a market.
• Warren Buffett / Howard Marks — the forerunners who turned letters into permanent capital.
• On the Nature of Long-Term Holds — Kyle splices this interview in as a callout explaining why Buffett and Marks could hold for decades: the soft prerequisite (Permanent Capital underwritten by trust) that the Yale case mostly assumes.
• The Unbundling of Venture Capital - Research — appears as a section of the Naked Brands scaffold, supporting the claim that trust and communication, not scale or secrecy, are the surviving differentiators.
• Hyper Publishing — Housel’s “millennials build trust digitally” point that Perell cites there.

Verbatim source notes — restored from Roam, 2026-09-21

• I grew up with the idea that information is out there if you look for it and that information should be free and readily available. That expectation represents a big shift between people like me and baby boomers like my parents.
• But something I think a lot about is that the average investor just has so much more access to information and commentary and being able to talk to other investors and compare fees than they did 25 years ago and as soon as the ability to compare fees, talk with other investors. You have people on the Internet like Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz, that are sharing information and telling you what to do. As soon as that open access to information happened, people were like, “I don’t want this mutual fund. I want Vanguard.” #Fees
• **Pretty much the definition of a market is people disagreeing with each other. I’m buying and you’re selling, and maybe we don’t necessarily disagree. **Maybe I’m young and you’re old and the transaction makes sense, but the heart of most markets is that people disagree. I think this company is going to do well and you think it’s gonna do really poorly and like, great. There’s a buyer and a seller right there. But it also means that people just get really, really antagonized over over other people’s views online. If you think hyperinflation is coming and I think interest rates are gonna fall, those are diametrically opposed views and so so it’s natural that people want to debate each other.
• I was interviewing a brilliant writer for my podcast recently and he said something that I can’t stop thinking about. He said that as quality increases and ceases to be a differentiating factor between products, companies increasingly begin to sell identity. And he said that this is happening with religion. He said that religions which require a lot of commitment such as Mormonism are becoming more popular, in part because there aren’t as many free riders and I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s a provocative idea and I can’t stop thinking about it.
• I’ve always thought that there’s a different couple ways of writing. You can give someone information that they didn’t have before, but that’s really difficult to do because companies like Reuters and Bloomberg are going to have better information and deliver it faster than you. The second is to take that information and have an opinion about it. And that’s interesting but it’s not that useful for people. But the third type is the type that I think more people should focus on is changing how people think. Take what information is out there and add context to it. **Say, look, this isn’t necessarily my opinion and this is not new information, but here’s what’s going on in the world. Have you thought about it in this different way? **Writing
• What flipped the switch from full-on informational secrecy to people like Warren Buffett and Howard Marks writing letters to then, the floodgates opening now?
• **I would say I would say a big trend started with my generation, which is that we more or less grew up with access to a lot of information. **An order of magnitude more information than my parents. I think if you go back a couple hundred years, every generation has had marginally more information than the generation that came before them, whether that was starting with books, and then telegrams, and then widespread newspapers, and telephone, and TV, and radio, on and on and on.
• Consumers are looking for alternatives and saying, look, these products are more or less alike, but I like this company a little bit more and the companies that realize that that shift is happening will put a lot more emphasis into their brands, not just in their marketing but how they treat their employees, how they work with governments around the world. Just how they put themselves out in the world. And really what it is is aligning all the stakeholders in your organization rather than just your shareholders.
• What do you think it is about finance in particular that has made the Financial Twitter and blogging community thrive?
• Why engage in a sword fight when you can bicker about the future of passive vs. active investing on Twitter?
• Vanguard was started in 1975. Vanguard more or less plotted along slowly for another 20 years, and by the 1990s, Vanguard had several billion dollars in assets under management. But it was not a game changer in the slightest until about 15 years ago. And then it just went exponential. Vanguard just took off. Even if you’re looking at it like a chart, like in log form, like 15 years ago, something just clicked and all of a sudden more money to started flowing into Vanguard.
• I think money is just inherently very emotional.** **More so than many other topics. Like there could never be an active Twitter community around changing your oil, even though that’s like a multi-billion dollar industry.
• Like if you hear Michael Batnick talk or Michael Batnick write, I think it’s easy to say I want to invest like you. I want to be able to think like you. I want to be in your court. You cannot do that for Merrill Lynch as a brand.
• And companies that get that, it’s not necessarily that they are more open and transparent with their data, although that is a point. It’s more along the lines of companies now realize that you can’t get away with misbehavior like you used to in an era when information was hidden, so brands now know that customers really care about how they treat their employees, how they treat their suppliers, what their products are made of, and where those ingredients or resources are sourced from.
• Usually, as a restaurant goer, all you ever see is the plate brought out to your table. But on Chef’s Table restaurants show you what happens before the food comes to the table. They show you how they source their food and how they make it. **That’s what content is doing for the asset management business, and you can extend this to many other businesses as well. So many people have always had access to the product. What is the mutual fund? What are the returns? **Investment Returns
• Josh Brown is blogging every day, and if you read Michael Batnick, Barry Ritholtz, Ben Carlson, and Nick Maggiulli, you start forming a subconscious trust with them that you wouldn’t have through other advisors. And there are others in the asset management business that are doing it too. people-to-follow