RenTech is a CIA front company
?
Jim Simons has died
271–280 of 338 posts
Re: Jim Simons has died
#272Will 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…
He was worth an ungodly amount of money. His foundation or whatever vehicle he chose will surely be around for a long time.
This is what Elon musk could have been. Instead of that he became a 13 yr old guy.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#273Last month an amazing biographical podcast came out describing his personal journey to starting rentech, and the factors that make the business so competitive. Certainly worth a listen https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/renaissance-technologies
I listen to Acquired religiously, but felt this particular episode was pretty weak. They went through Zuckerman's The Man Who Solved the Market [0] chapter by chapter, butchering a few parts because the hosts don't know quant finance well (though they seem to know VC and product very well).
I'd recommend just reading the book instead. I'd also recommend Derman's My Life as a Quant [1] for a broader take at other firms around the same time that Renaissance was taking off.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think you are underestimating the reach of HN. While I personally didn't know Jim, I know several people who did. And I know many people, me included, who benefited from his generosity and support of science.
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Re: Jim Simons has died
#275Will 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…
Magma. Only in the us. Sydney where it’s developed have to pay for it
Re: Jim Simons has died
#276This person made a lot of money, so it’s easy to say that he’s part of the machine. But, the man had principles. And he stood by them. Grateful for him showing us the way.
He took money out of the machine and donated it to good causes. Arguably he was anti machine
Re: Jim Simons has died
#277Will 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.
> Hopefully the Simons empire has enough people who will keep executing his vision and stave off bureaucratic rot.
I think that fear is why the Gates foundation (or was it the one by Buffett or both?) have to spend down their endowment within a few years of the founder's death and then close shop.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
His wife also helps run the foundation doesn’t she? Looks like she’s ~73 so hopefully has a few years left.
73 is less than a decade into retirement age; hopefully she has much more than a few! Looks like 14.5 years life expectancy
> Looks like 14.5 years life expectancy
And I assume that's for normal people of her age and gender? She's probably far from normal.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
sadly, the trend for these sorts of things is to sour after the original founder leaves... There is an esoteric concept that has some dynamics that explain this phenomenon somewhat. Not to get to into the weeds (the origins of this concept are esoteric religious ideas - I mean this secularly, as it relates to business entities) but the concept is an 'egregore' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore#:~:text=An%20egreg…
HHMI is going strong. didn't really kick until gear until after Hughes died, but still
That's because the HHMI as planned by Hughes was kind of a scam. It took legal decisions against his family to establish HHMI as a serious biomedical funding agency.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Important to keep in mind that these returns ceased to be compounding quickly: they restarted from scratch 10bn each year to score 30%. Successful quant stratégies tend to hit capacity limits...
Their success is limited by what other party ready to lose, most of the time, these all are zero sum games.
Depends on how you look at it.
Eg selling insurance can be seen as a zero sum game, but it's a genuinely useful product for people, even when the expected value for them is negative. It works, because utility is not strictly proportional to money.
Similarly, market making delivers liquidity-on-demand for a fee.