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Jim Simons has died
21–30 of 338 posts
Re: Jim Simons has died
#22Sadly 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…
I remember the time that I went to a conference put on by Sun Microsystems in the early 2000s and asked a question about certain hardware being good for main memory databases which got me jumped on by a RenTech recruiter. Had I known what was about to happen to my current job at that time (mentioned in another comment in this thread) I would have taken more interest.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#23What was the cause of death?
Re: Jim Simons has died
#24Pretty good run for an adult life-long heavy smoker.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#25Will 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…
That money for the arXiv was a decade late. arXiv barely survived the 2000s.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#26Sadly 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…
RT must be one of the most selective companies in the world. Even to get an interview you'd better have a damn good CV (medals in math/cs/science Olympiads, degree from a top tier school etc.). And then after a few years of working there you're a (multi)millionaire. It's totally bonkers.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#27Acquired Podcast did a 3 hours episode on the history of Renaissance Technologies last month.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#28[deleted]
Re: Jim Simons has died
#29The reality is that most extremely wealthy people are very far on the right tail of intelligence. People exist that can predict the market, they are just very rare.
While mister Simons might not be the best example, I sometimes feel that you can easily beat the market if you are well connected and have access to information that can move the markets before anyone else. For example how much know-how do you need to beat the market if you're a US senator? You know before anyone else what's going to happen regarding policy and can plan accordingly. There were rumours about this even…
That kind of theory is the same as chemtrails are real.
Insider trading exists but the amount of secrecy to make that theory a reality would be unobtainable.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#30Sadly 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…
His whole RenTech story was fascinating. Effectively an outsider in finance who gathered a bunch of other outsiders (aka big mathematicians), and decided to start a hedge fund that takes zero interest in the actual companies and trades solely on math. Which makes sense, since none of the main people involved in its creation had any corporate or finance experience, but tons of math experience and knowledge. This is ov…
Yep, not argument here at all, RenTech is a super fascinating outlier in finance.
It's kind of inspiring. I don't know a ton about finance or trading algorithms, but I know a fair bit (I think) about math and CS, and because of RenTech I've formulating my own trading strategies (just paper trades). Thus far all I've been able to do is lose all my pretend money by trying to play options, but it's still fun to try.
Will I be successful and make billions? Almost certainly not, but it's an excuse to play with different types of math that I don't play with very often, but RenTech proved that you can beat the market by taking advantage mathematics.