Morgan Housel is out with a new book and he shared some of the insights related to writing and investing on The Compound podcast with Josh Brown and Michael Batnick. 

The author of the best selling Psychology of Money just published Same as Ever, in which he uses his signature style of leveraging historical anecdotes to illustrate “what never changes.”

The most interesting points from the podcast: 

–The best writing is timeless 

–Great investors focus on what doesn’t change 

–Write online to test your ideas

–Podcasts are bigger than you think

WRITE TIMELESS THINGS:

Morgan says that when writing a blog for Collaborative Fund he asks himself whether people will still care about the issue in five or ten years. “It’s an important filter.” For example, a headline that Nvidia misses earnings by a penny probably won’t matter.  

He said his editors at the Wall Street Journal used to ask him how a column he was writing related to what was happening in the market that day or week. He said it usually didn’t. “I always wanted to do the opposite,” he said. 

Josh Brown echoed the sentiment, saying that although he writes about market fluctuations, he always tries to make a larger, more enduring point. 

It’s a good lesson for anyone writing on social media and it’s hard to do.

The temptation is so strong to focus on the here and now. That’s evidenced by the beginning of the Compound podcast with Morgan where the hosts talked about the drama with OpenAI, which was in an extreme state of flux. 

FOCUS ON WHAT DOESN’T CHANGE: 

Morgan relates a story from a friend of Warren Buffett. Driving around Omaha in 2009 during the midst of the Global Recession, the man wondered how the world would ever recover. Buffett responded by saying Snickers, then the world’s best-selling candy bar, was also the best-selling one in 1962.  

The story reminds us to focus on what doesn’t change, instead of the relentless shifting of the tides. 

Morgan said that while technology is always evolving, greed and fear and risk and jealousy and tribal affiliations and overconfidence and short-sightedness are eternal. 

He noted that even in the midst of considerable economic and political upheaval during the past several decades – when there was never an obvious time to buy — markets and opportunities flourished. 

WRITE ONLINE TO TEST YOUR IDEAS: 

Morgan said writing online is crucial to his process to write books. For the Psychology of Money, which has sold 4 million copies, he reviewed posts he’d written that did the best. He used those as the skeleton for each chapter. 

“The best way to write a book is to test the ideas online.” 

Nicholas Taleb, the author of the Black Swan and other books about finance, does the same, he said. 

PODCASTS ARE BIGGER THAN YOU THINK: 

Morgan said he started a podcast six months ago and that already it has a bigger audience than the blog he’s written for 17 years. 

“The potential for people who want to learn with their ears is bigger than the audience who want to learn with their eyes,” he said. 

He said he had not appreciated the opportunity because he prefers to read. “I assumed everyone else was the same.” 

The lesson: “You have to go where people want to learn.”