Matthew R. Piepenburg is an American lawyer, investor, author, and macro strategist. He began in transactional law before developing a career in hedge funds, family-office management, alternative investments, and precious-metals research. He is a partner of Von Greyerz and co-founder of Signals Matter, and has written books on investment risk and gold.
Background
Matthew R. Piepenburg was born on February 19, 1970, in San Francisco, California, United States. His professional background combines legal training with international finance, investment management, and writing on monetary and market risk.
Piepenburg speaks English, French, and German. His work has included experience in the United States, Germany, and international investment markets, connecting a legal foundation with later responsibilities in family offices, hedge funds, and wealth-preservation businesses.
Education
Piepenburg earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University in 1992, graduating magna cum laude and being elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Brown, founded in 1764 in Providence, Rhode Island, is an Ivy League university known for its open curriculum and emphasis on undergraduate liberal education.
He received a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1995. The University of Michigan, founded in Detroit in 1817 and relocated to Ann Arbor in 1837, is a major public research university whose law school is among the oldest in the United States. Piepenburg later completed a master's degree at Harvard University, an institution founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a long tradition of advanced study and professional education.
Career
Piepenburg began his professional career as a transactional attorney and worked at Steel Hector & Davis in Miami, Florida, where his practice was associated with general and real-estate law. Steel Hector & Davis was a large Florida law firm with a diversified practice covering litigation, corporate and securities law, finance, real estate, environmental law, international law, and other commercial fields. He was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1995 and served as executive note editor of the University of Michigan Journal of International Law while studying at Michigan.
He later worked at Dresdner Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, and moved into investment management and family-office work. His documented positions included general counsel and chief investment officer of the J.H. Johnson Family Office and managing director of Massey Quick & Co., a multi-family office. These roles placed his legal experience alongside due diligence, portfolio construction, alternative investments, and the management of private wealth.
During the Nasdaq bubble of 1999–2001, Piepenburg launched his first hedge fund. He subsequently worked with hedge-fund and family-office strategies involving managed futures, long-short credit, global macro investing, and other alternative vehicles. He also worked with Morgan Stanley's hedge-fund platform in selecting, allocating, and sizing portfolio managers for a multi-manager investment structure.
Piepenburg became a managing member and macro strategist of Signals Matter, an investment-advisory organization that provides research and portfolio perspectives on macroeconomic conditions, market risk, and wealth preservation. The firm's regulatory brochure identifies him as a managing member from 2017, while its professional materials describe his experience overseeing the allocation of more than $5 billion in investable assets and conducting due diligence on hedge-fund managers and strategies.
He later joined Von Greyerz, an international precious-metals and wealth-management firm, where he serves as a partner. His work there focuses on monetary history, systemic financial risk, gold and silver, currency debasement, central-bank policy, and long-term asset preservation. He writes market commentary, participates in interviews and conferences, and contributes to public discussions of global macroeconomics and precious-metals investing.
Views
Piepenburg's published financial work emphasizes capital preservation, disciplined risk management, and skepticism toward investment decisions driven by herd behavior or short-term optimism. He argues that investors should examine monetary policy, debt, liquidity, and market structure rather than rely solely on headline prices or conventional assumptions.
His writing on precious metals presents gold as a historically significant wealth-preservation asset and treats currency debasement, excessive leverage, and systemic financial risk as central considerations in long-term investment planning. His literary work also explores meaning, ethics, religion, philosophy, and the distinction between financial success and a broader conception of a worthwhile life.
Membership
Piepenburg is a member of The Florida Bar, the professional organization and regulatory body serving attorneys admitted to practice law in Florida. His professional affiliations also include leadership and ownership roles in investment organizations, which are documented separately as work activities rather than memberships.
Personality
Piepenburg's public professional approach is characterized by a direct, conservative, and risk-conscious style of investment commentary. His published materials emphasize skepticism toward speculative market narratives, attention to downside risk, and the importance of evidence-based portfolio decisions.
Connections
Piepenburg is the father of a daughter and a son. He has also been associated with The Emerson Circle, a literary initiative centered on major works of literature, philosophy, poetry, and theology.
