Naked Brands: The Future of Finance

Author: David Perell URL: https://www.perell.com/blog/the-future-of-finance One-line: Part of the Naked Brands series — money managers have become a commodity, so the firms that win compete on trust and attention, openly disclosing strategy and building personality-led brands.

Key claims

• Money managers are a commodity. Quantitative strategies, equal access to information, and low-cost vehicles have leveled the playing field; the traditional asset/wealth manager struggles to deliver value.
• Active management underperforms after fees. Bill Sharpe argued in 1990 that passive beats active net of fees; passive investments now total ~$6 trillion (up from <1% thirty years prior). Buffett says amateurs can beat most pros by simply buying index funds.
• The traditional edges are gone. Charley Ellis: 50 years ago maybe 5,000 people did active investing; now at least a million, all smart, all with the same tools and the same SEC-mandated information.
• Shifts in society begin with shifts in communication. The telegraph and the telephone (NYSE, 1878) collapsed the time/space constraints — and Dunbar’s Number limits — that once made investing a local affair, turning it into an instant global one.
• Trust and attention are the new differentiation. Leading firms openly disclose strategy, are guided by transparency, ownership of attention, and consistent communication — Perell calls them Naked Brands.™
• Ritholtz Wealth Management (the “Wu-Tang Clan of Finance”) — a collective of financial bloggers; Josh Brown: “people don’t follow brands, they follow people.” Podcasts are the new word-of-mouth, blogs the new business cards.
• Cambria Investments (Meb Faber & Eric Richardson, 2007) — “Content is sales. We put out a bunch of the content and people find us”; the firm crossed $1B AUM largely through daily connection with readers/clients. Echoes Charlie Munger: don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself.

Notable quotes

“Financial services was always sold on the basis of the reputation of the firm… It’s about personality… people don’t follow brands, they follow people.” — Josh Brown, RWM

“In the history of Wall Street I think there are two types of firms… firms where you’re putting out products that you believe in… you put your own money in them… Then you have a lot of firms that will put out whatever they can to capitalize and make as much money as they can on the themes of the day.” — Meb Faber

“Content is sales. We put out a bunch of the content and people find us.” — Meb Faber

How it connects

• Naked Brands — the parent essay; this is the finance installment of the series.
• Ritholtz Wealth Management / Cambria Investments / Meb Faber — the case studies of transparency-as-moat.
• Charlie Munger — “don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself” as the integrity backbone of a Naked Brand.

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

• Called the “Wu-Tang Clan of Finance,” Ritholtz Wealth Management (RWM) is a collection of prominent financial bloggers. Barry Ritholtz, the founder of the firm, started blogging in 1998 out of frustration with misleading and superficial mainstream market commentary.
• Before these inventions, investing practices and marketing tactics were constrained by time and space. The size of groups, or the number of people who could work together was limited by “Dunbar’s Number,” which states that groups of more than 150 people require institutional and technological innovations to cooperate effectively. But by removing technological limitations, modern communications technologies have transformed investing from a lethargic local affair to an instant global one.
• ((0ocVD0aqj)) Charlie Munger
• Shifts in society begin with shifts in the way we communicate. New technologies reshape the flow of human communication and transform our perception of the world. The shape of information flow largely determines the structure of society, and by extension, the flow of capital through it. To that end, societies have always been shaped more by the nature of media than by the content of it.
• Cambria Investments is an investment management firm in Los Angeles co-founded by Meb Faber and Eric Richardson in 2007. Meb is a prolific writer, researcher and hosts his own podcast. His first white paper “A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation” has been downloaded more than any other white paper. Meb’s an active proponent of exchange traded funds (ETFs,) low cost investing, and the democratization of institutional investment strategies to retail investors. articles-to-read
• Telegraphs were unaffected by weather and road conditions, and as a result, telegraphs worked almost 100% of the time. Telephones were first installed in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 1878, which gave investors direct access to brokers on the floor of the exchange.
• On average, active managers don’t deliver the value they claim to provide. In 1990, Bill Sharpe, a Nobel Prize winner for economics argued that after fees, passive investing strategies outperform active ones. This is even more true today. Most investors are better off with low cost index funds. Investors have responded in waves — ETFs and index funds have exploded in popularity over the past decade.
• Money managers are a commodity. The rise of quantitative investment strategies (computers), more equal access to information (the internet) and other factors have leveled the playing field. The threats posed by low cost investment vehicles and the abundance of talented managers are challenging the ability for the traditional asset and wealth manager to deliver value.
• Two firms, Cambria Investments and Ritholtz Wealth Management, stand out from their competition. Few firms command trust and attention like Ritholtz and Cambria. Through candor, authenticity, and consistent content creation, they are blazing the trail for future managers.
• Passive investments now total $6 trillion, according to Moody’s. That’s a steep increase from less than 1% 30 years ago. Warren Buffett, who made his fortune through the selection of individual businesses, believes amateur investors can outperform most investment professionals by simply investing in index funds.