There is a nice book that goes into detail of his life called: "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution"
Jim Simons has died
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Re: Jim Simons has died
#92I might be naive but it seems unfortunate that so many bright minds end up using their talents to catch trillions of pennies in the financial markets.
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Re: Jim Simons has died
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quanta Magazine is also funded by his foundation.
Even the Numberphile YouTube Channel. He was very serious about improving maths education and actually did alot.
Man. That Numberphile episode on Fermat's Last Theorem with Simon Singh had me on the edge of my seat like I was as a child when Darth Maul pulled out that double-bladed lightsaber during Phantom Menace. I'm not a math major either.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#94Earlier 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…
I find the tension between founders(idealists) / marketers(survivalists) pretty interesting. The Jobs-less apple era is one recent instance I assume.
Both are needed. But Currently there are no checks in place to prevent this 'mind-share' take-over, so to speak...
Re: Jim Simons has died
#95Earlier 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.
I'd still wish to have details on this (I too heard of similar numbers for his fund before), because in my newb eyes .. such returns would mean they could absorb a huge chunk of the planet liquidity.
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Re: Jim Simons has died
#96The 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.
I’m doubting. Simons might be an exception given that he got a PhD in maths at age 23. He was always smart, and I think he was bound to excel in whatever field he chose. But people don’t need be extremely smart to get wealthy. Just executing well on a simple idea can make one extremely wealthy, and there’s considerable luck involved. There’s also the need to have persuasive skills, connections, charisma, and all that…
Both of the people you mention are/were fairly obviously of high intelligence. A conservative lower bound would be the top 5%.
As intelligent as Jim Simons? Almost certainly not.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There are US senators that make millions by using their spouses as intermediaries to buy and sell shares. Insider trading as a crime only exists for those that are not well connected enough
Those senators just trade on their own behalf because its not illegal to.
Why would they involve their spouse? If it was illegal for them to trade but their spouse made a trade it would be trivial for the SEC to trace it back to intel they learned.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#98I highly recommend the book "The Man Who Solved the Market" by Gregory Zuckerman which explains how Simons build his infamous company. https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0...
+1 for this book. It's a great way to understand what he did.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#99Earlier 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.
I'd still wish to have details on this (I too heard of similar numbers for his fund before), because in my newb eyes .. such returns would mean they could absorb a huge chunk of the planet liquidity.
No, because such returns aren't scalable.
According to industry rumors, RenTech is somewhere between $10-20bn AUM (assets under management, i.e. the capital used for trading), and the profit that they make, they can't reinvest, they have to take it out as profit.
Re: Jim Simons has died
#100Will 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.
The thing is that he genuinely loved math. I don't think there's really anyone in his orbit who loves math as much. His family is his family and his colleagues love money.
We'll see in the coming months and years whether he was able to create a structure that continues his legacy but usually the answer to that question is no.