Tom Lott & Matt Piepenburg
We're two guys who went to some shiny schools, worked in some shiny banks, invested with shiny hedge funds and grew pretty tired of just advising a shiny crowd. The Market School is our effort to synthesize our unique knowledge and reach a broader audience--whether you're a market veteran or total novice, a zillionaire or a kid with a piggy bank. Anyone can understand Matt's writing and videos. Basically, he's a finance guy who wished he had been a teacher. The markets, though laden with negative connotations (from Gordon-Gecko-like egos to TV talking-head, Ken and Barbie "economists") can nevertheless be fascinating settings of history, psychology and misunderstood opportunity (and risk). We feel that once demystified, the markets (and your personal portfolios) can actually be made to be understandable and even interesting. Most importantly, one doesn’t need decades of resume-hopping among NY banks or an MBA to be comfortably fluent in the core issues and strategies that matter in today’s central-bank distorted markets. We enjoy delivering the simple rather than the unnecessarily complex so that our Subscribers can share in the dialogue of market talk without having to simply take their advisor's word for it.
Confidence & Control
Essentially, we want to give you confidence and control over your own investments. Such confidence comes from overcoming fear. Knowledge is fear's biggest enemy. It's up to you to get that knowledge and The Market School makes this much easier. Together, Tom and Matt have spent over five decades researching, creating, trading and developing market portfolios across a pretty broad spectrum of asset classes, vehicles and geographies. Matt, your online "professor," began this finance thing in European banking (Dresdner Bank/Franfurt) during the university years, and then became the general counsel and later CIO to a single-family office (J.H. Johnson); thereafter he was the managing director of a multi-family office (Massey Quick, & Co). During this time, he was responsible for allocating billions in capital across the public and private markets. Matt’s globe-trotting experience have rendered him trilingual in English, French and German.
Background & Experience
Tom's background as a commodity trading advisor, managed futures trader, and sell-side retail and trading executive at Morgan Stanley, The World Bank, as well as within his own hedge fund, along with his private equity background (along with a BA from Yale in economics and an MBA from Wharton) add considerably to the insights set forth in The Market School. Yes, Matt hit the books too (Brown, BA; University of Michigan, JD; and Harvard, MA), but like Tom, gained his market education on the job not in the classroom. Again: our goal here is to synthesize this knowledge and experience for all who seek straight-talk, common sense and personal responsibility. When not looking at markets, your virtual teacher at The Market School contributes to The Good Men Project, an online magazine for men to swap thoughts on life, and also was the proud board member to TheraSurf, a foundation dedicated to introducing special-needs children to the healing powers of surfing. Years back, he organized The Emerson Circle, a bi-annual get-together in Sundance where the Great Books of literature, philosophy, theology and poetry were discussed in that ever elusive and humbling attempt to address the “art of a conducting a life," of which he is certainly far from mastering.