Matt is one of those people who was “not born in Texas but got here as fast as he could." Moving to the Dallas area at just three months old, he spent his entire childhood in Dallas and eventually graduated high school from Trinity Christian Academy in Addison.
Matt attended Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri where he took Finance 402: Options Pricing. It was in this class that he became suspicious of the hypocrisy in the financial services industry. The class' professor taught the ideology of "efficient markets," yet he was concurrently running an arbitrage fund. Obviously, the two philosophies are in exact contradiction to one another, so he concluded that the professor was either lying to the class (who were paying a very steep tuition to attend) or to his clients.
After college, Matt returned to Texas and worked at Arthur Andersen LLP, where he saw first-hand the blatant conflicts of interest that led to the firm's downfall (and promptly resigned before its demise). Eventually, the naivete of youth gave way to the harsh reality of the business world. Once Matt entered in the financial services industry, he committed to a better means of helping his clients. This involved minimizing conflicts of interest while delivering solutions that Main St. investors could rely on to build wealth and provide financial security. He started his own fee-only RIA firm in 2005 and since then has signed on as a fiduciary for every client account he has managed.
In 2017, First Commercial Bank, N.A. attracted him to help serve their customers and the two parties decided that the RIA platform provided by Strategic Financial Concepts, LLC (NFA’s advisory partner) best suited how they wanted to serve their mutual clientele.
Ultimately, Matt wants to help his clients achieve the goal his father and grandfather did which was to provide a better living for their children. He has developed his own proprietary trading program called Managed EquitiesTM, which is available to all investors regardless of race, religion, creed, wealth, or social status.
Matt and his beautiful wife Leslie have the two most adorable children on the planet, Ellis and Kaki. They love visiting Gruene Hall on a Saturday afternoon, driving their ’71 GMC Jimmy down River Rd., walking through downtown New Braunfels after church on Sunday, and taking everything else in that their not-so-little Hill Country Hamlet has to offer. When Matt is not at work or with family, he enjoys playing basketball, trying to fix things, or just sitting on a boat.
The verse that perhaps best describes his outlook is:
When pride comes, then comes dishonor, But with the humble is wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2 (NASB)