He was a legend. RIP.
Maybe a black bar on top of HN?
Jim Simons has died
151–160 of 338 posts
Re: Jim Simons has died
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I meant the financial-industrial complex that dictates our economy.
He wasn't really dictating anything. He was just in the casino playing a better game of poker (I don't mean that in a bad way).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician)#Pol...
> Since 1990, Renaissance Technologies has contributed $59,081,152 to federal campaigns and since 2001, and has spent $3,730,000 on lobbying as of 2016.
Let's not kid ourselves, people at this level of wealth and power can very much make their voice heard by the people who make policy. He's definitely not the only one in this position, but to frame him as a "better casino player" who is "not really dictating anything" is naive at best.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#153Will be interesting to see how this affects math research. He has pumped unthinkable amounts of money into the field. The only first-class flights I've taken in my life were to get to Simons-funded conferences at super fancy hotels. (I found these conferences a bit ridiculous, but the luxury treatment did ensure that they could get together a lot of the biggest names in the field in one place.) Besides the conference…
Hopefully the Simons empire has enough people who will keep executing his vision and stave off bureaucratic rot. Making money is one thing, but circulating so much of it back through math and science is a great legacy.
For what it's worth, the foundation was actually kickstarted by his wife.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
The phone screen was hard and I didn't pass. It's not usual tech interviews they hit you with a lot of stats and math GRE style questions. Maybe the prep in finance is different
They don't really hire finance people so I suspect most/all of the interview processes are heavy on the match/stat side.
Quantitative finance interviews are pretty much all probability and stats questions.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not blaming Simons, I am blaming the people I worked for when I worked at arXiv who, again, took a decade to start looking for sustainable funding.
While this thread is by no means as formal of an event. Picture yourself at someones memorial service, before/during/after the service you bring up a topic that is orthogonal to the person's life and frames it about yourself instead of the person being memorialized. Its just a bit weird.
Memorial service? What are you on about? In all likelihood, nobody here had met the guy, and HN would hardly even be on his radar. Picture yourself at a coffee place discussing some celebrity's life event and maybe it won't be so weird anymore.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully the Simons empire has enough people who will keep executing his vision and stave off bureaucratic rot. Making money is one thing, but circulating so much of it back through math and science is a great legacy.
For what it's worth, the foundation was actually kickstarted by his wife.
I used to think this kind of thing was because someone didn't care.
But I also think someone is at high level, a partner might be the only one who can look at things from above, seeing the big big picture.
Of course it could be the person doesn't care, but it could also be the person is busy, etc
Re: Jim Simons has died
#157Sadly I've never been able to snag an interview with RenTech (and I've applied like a dozen times), but they're the ones that actually made me start taking finance a lot more seriously. Maybe if I ever finish my PhD they'll hire me. I had previously thought of HFT and Quant as a bunch of "finance bros", and kind of dismissed it as "not real CS" [1]. Reading about RenTech and Jim Simons made realize that there's actua…
Why would you think it was a bunch of "finance bros"? You can BS your way to the top in such things as Sales because raw intellect and mental ability is not required. The same can be said for many aspects of finance. But you can't just do HFT or Quant because you want to - you actually need skills. Same way I can't BS my way into designing a rocket - you either can or you can't.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
He wasn't really dictating anything. He was just in the casino playing a better game of poker (I don't mean that in a bad way).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician)#Pol... > Since 1990, Renaissance Technologies has contributed $59,081,152 to federal campaigns and since 2001, and has spent $3,730,000 on lobbying as of 2016. Let's not kid ourselves, people at this level of wealth and power can very much make their voice heard by the people who make policy. He's definitely not the only one in this position, but to frame him a…
Simon’s business partner, Mercer, bet big on Trump in 2016:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-...
I am under the impression this might have been a bad look for RenTech hence Mercer leaving the firm.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#159Will be interesting to see how this affects math research. He has pumped unthinkable amounts of money into the field. The only first-class flights I've taken in my life were to get to Simons-funded conferences at super fancy hotels. (I found these conferences a bit ridiculous, but the luxury treatment did ensure that they could get together a lot of the biggest names in the field in one place.) Besides the conference…
Hopefully the Simons empire has enough people who will keep executing his vision and stave off bureaucratic rot. Making money is one thing, but circulating so much of it back through math and science is a great legacy.
It is not about enough people, it is about THE PERSON. Every people is different and there are people who are more different and outliers.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
IIRC his fund averaged around 30% gains per year, every year, over 30 years. (I'm going from memory here, too lazy to look it up). That is just such an unbelievable performance number.
it was 62% per year for 33 years.
Their returns worked out to something like an average of 39% per year after fees, which is the figure I've heard cited. This may be what they were thinking of. Renaissance was/is known for having higher fees than likely the entirety of their competition, which they can get away with since their returns still outstrip the rest after the higher fees.