Jim Simons

Jim Simons joins Lawrence for fascinating new and different take on the life of a man best known to the public for becoming a billionaire by using techniques from mathematics and statistics to revolutionize investing, but who has had numerous other careers, as a brilliant mathematician, academic leader, code breaker and science philanthropist. You can show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

The Medallion Fund is the best performing fund in investing history. It has averaged over 66% before fee average returns since inception! Wowza! In this episode we cover the story of how Jim Simons started the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund in the late 70’s, and how they’ve achieved such amazing investment success through their Medallion Fund. Check out this episode to learn about the story of Renaissance Technologies, as well as some details on how they’ve achieved these jaw-dropping results. Whitepaper: https://www.cornell-capital.com/blog/2020/02/medallion-fund-the-ultimate-counterexample.html Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjuL1TH_cWY&ab_channel=TheCompound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvUyuo53kQQ&t=112s&ab_channel=BenFelix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwT4dJ6y-2k&ab_channel=WarrenBuffettSuccess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZeo-Vj4dco&ab_channel=WallStreetTalks https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1rgwjlwfqccst/The-Medallion-Fund-Is-Still-Outperforming-Other-Renaissance-Funds-Still-Aren-t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5kIdtMJGc8&t=35s&ab_channel=TED Podcast website: Wall Street Vision Investing Podcast Get in touch with Vlad: Wall Street Vision - Contact Disclaimer: This podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied upon as the basis for investment decisions. Before making any decisions, consult a professional. I may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast. This show is copyrighted by the Wall Street Vision, written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

Please enjoy my monologue Experience, Jim Simons and Raising Kids with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio. This episode may also include great outside guests from my archive. --- I’m MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I’m proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I’d like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can’t get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

The Agenda 👇* Hilary Cottam’s inspiring map for reinventing the welfare state 🎧* My latest column in Sifted: remote work as the new frontier on the labor market* What quant investor Jim Simons reveals about capitalism on financial markets* My take on GameStop, and how the little guys took on large hedge funds* Lessons shared by my friend Ben Robinson on business strategy* Why Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm still matters for startup founders🎧 The most recent Building Bridges podcast is out, featuring Hilary Cottam, author of Radical Help. I first wrote about Hilary’s book back in 2018 (in Le Monde, no less!), remarking that,For Cottam, the solution isn’t to reform the current system but rather to invent a new one. She believes that the most important question is how to correct the original sin of the welfare state’s transactional nature, whereby it does not take into account the relationships between individuals themselves. The fact is that most people are surrounded by a group, whether large or small, of family and friends. But this group is in no way an actor within the social protection system. We are covered individually, but the system does not take into account the other individuals to whom we are connected.Needless to say, I find her approach fascinating, and highly recommend giving a listen! Use the player above or go listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🎧⚠️ In my latest Sifted column, I talk about a big opportunity that governments—including that of the EU—could take advantage of: the acceleration of remote work and the need to adapt institutions to facilitate remote work for both employers and employees. Of course, even with institutional changes there will still be significant questions that remain, such as wage rates based on location. But if governments confront issues such as payroll taxes, social security, and labor law in a way that turns remote work from an HR headache into a banal fact of the 21st century economy, it could provide a real competitive advantage in terms of economic development.👉 Read the whole column on the Sifted website: Remote work: HR nightmare?🐳 Doing Capitalism in Financial Services (Round 1)Given that it deals with, well, capital, you’d think that financial services would be a place where capitalism naturally has the upper hand on the market economy. Yet much of the industry really does exist in the simple logic of ‘buy low, sell a bit higher’. And that is about as simple a definition of the market economy that one can have.For a long time, there weren’t many (if any) spaces where you could insert capital into the financial services production process in order to escape to the promised land of increasing returns to scale. Even today, it’s not that easy—just ask any startup founder who’s trying to find the right business model that can unlock that door, whether in financial services or elsewhere.In this edition, I provide some early notes on a book I’ve been reading recently, Gregory Zuckerman’s The Man Who Solved the Market. It shows how traders back in the latter half of the 20th century started to have ideas about how financial services could move from the market economy into capitalism, but also how those often brilliant minds had to wait until digital technology caught up and made it all possible.👉 I look at why the industry is still very much within that transition, highlighting the story of Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, in Doing Capitalism in Financial Services (Round 1).👑 Everyone Wants To Be a Capitalist  The one thing I’m quite sure of regarding the GameStop story is that we haven’t seen the end of it yet. One reason why is because it has been driven (even without falling into the facile idea of “little guys vs. hedge funds”, which has been pretty well shown to not be the case) by the ‘multitude’: those billions of networked individuals who can now exert power in the Entrepreneurial Age.It shouldn’t be a surprise that many members of the multitude were drawn towards trading over the past year. After all, while much of the world’s market economy has been effectively halted by COVID-19, it’s been only too evident that the capitalist side of things has been doing quite well. That left a ripe environment for what my friend Martin Gurri calls “The Revolt of the Public” to make its way to the heart of Wall Street (which, as it turns out, is located less in Zuccotti Park and more in Bloomberg terminals 😉).In the end, it’s not simply that barriers to information have been taken away. It’s that without those barriers, the multitude is able to coordinate in ways that were never before possible. It’s no guarantee that ‘the people’ will win against hedge funds; but at the very least, it’s a guarantee that there’s a new player in the game who must be accounted for.👉 I give my contribution to the financial story of the week in Everyone Wants To Be a Capitalist.♛ Ben Robinson on Business StrategyWith The Family’s current batch of startups, we hold regular private meetups with entrepreneurs, operators and investors who can provide key insights on various aspects of building an ambitious business. This past week, I invited my friend Ben Robinson of Aperture to join us to discuss one of my favorite topics: business strategy.Specifically, we talked about how business strategy is no longer only for big corporations, but can also function as a guiding principle from the very earliest of stages. Having strategy ready to serve as a kind of guide can even be critical in the early days, since a startup is necessarily dealing with a high level of uncertainty on a daily basis. The areas where strategy can come into play are many: from choosing your market to structuring operations, from building your brand to properly valuing engagement. Each area may require its own approach and have its own lessons to learn; but if you have a clear and coherent strategy in mind, it can serve as the unifying link between them all.👉 I  provide ten highlights from the talk in Ben Robinson on Business Strategy.💼 A Few Notes on Crossing the ChasmOne feature of many business books is that you don’t really need to read the whole thing to understand the key point. That could sound like a critique, but the truth is that many of those key points really are important, and I’m often grateful that they’re out there circulating, even if the book itself might not lend itself to a second reading (or even a complete first reading).Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm is one of those books for me. The framework that Moore develops, clearly outlining various customer segments and what drives their purchasing behavior, is highly valuable for an entrepreneur. Knowing which niche you’re focusing on at the moment, and then later figuring out how to adapt your sales pitch for the next group you’re targeting, is critical. After all, if you’re not speaking to people in a way that understands their behavior, you aren’t going to get very far in selling to them.And I think there’s something there that might be a universal trait of great entrepreneurs: they always seem to understand exactly what category their interlocutor belongs to, and thus they know how to sell their product. So while a young entrepreneur needs to learn thousands of things in hundreds of different domains, I’d still say developing that particular skill would be a good one to focus on!👉 I cite some other thinkers as well in A Few Notes on “Crossing the Chasm”.Sounds interesting? Subscribe to European Straits and let me know what you think!From The Networked Welfare State (November 2018): The digital transition allows Hilary Cottam to bring forward her vision with a great deal of optimism. Thanks to digital tools, the idea of inventing a networked welfare state isn’t just a utopia, but instead a promising possibility. The digital world connects individuals, circulating information between them and calling on them to contribute where needed to better cover and help the others. It doesn’t require one to renounce national solidarity, but rather to realize that individuals covered by the welfare state can form an active network rather than a passive queue in front of an office door.All recent editions:* A Few Notes on Crossing the Chasm—for subscribers only.* Ben Robinson on Business Strategy—for subscribers only.* Everyone Wants To Be a Capitalist—for subscribers only.* Doing Capitalism in Financial Services (Round 1)—for subscribers only.* London & Paris Together. Business Strategy. Peak Bay Area. Lobbying Regulators.—for everyone.* A Founder’s Handbook for Lobbying the Government—for subscribers only.* Away From the Bay Area—for subscribers only.* Business Strategy at a Small Scale—for subscribers only.* The New Entente Cordiale—for subscribers only.* Gender Equality w/ Nina Goswami. India. Financial Loops. Rich People. War & Inflation.—for everyone.European Straits is a 5-email-a-week product, and all essays are subscriber-only (with rare exceptions). Join us!From Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 Nicolas This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit europeanstraits.substack.com

Mathematician, codebreaker, Professor, hedge fund pioneer, & philanthropist Jim Simons makes his first-ever podcast appearance on this episode of INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE with UC San Diego Professor Brian Keating. Learn about Chern-Simons theory, leadership lessons, hedge funds, and a dedication to serve the world through basic research from a master. It is truly a delight to share with you the more personal side of the man who’s been called The World’s Smartest Billionaire: https://youtu.be/gjVDqfUhXOY In this interview, we discuss heroes, fatherhood, leadership and the art of math.  00:15:15 Why he’d invite Abraham Lincoln to dinner. 00:23:42 Discovering Zeno’s paradox at the age of three. 00:34:28 Can math be beautiful? 00:46:25 Lessons from a master investor: alpha vs. beta. 00:56:06 The serendipitous Chern-Simons partnership. 01:03:18 A father’s love. 01:11:09 The legacy of a good example. Jim Simons earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from UC Berkeley at the age of 23. He worked as a mathematician for the NSA and as a professor and department chair at Stony Brook University. Simons earned billions after founding the hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies. He co-founded the Simons Foundation with his wife Marilyn in 1994 to advance scientific research. The foundation provided funding for the Simons Observatory, a telescope array being built in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile https://simonsobservatory.org/ Simons also founded Math For America in 2004 to facilitate better math education. Watch a TED interview with Jim Simons https://youtu.be/U5kIdtMJGc8 Learn about the Simons Observatory, including the Simons-National Society of Black Physicists Scholars Program (SNSP) https://simonsobservatory.org/snsp.php Learn more about the Simons Foundation on the web: https://www.simonsfoundation.org follow them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SimonsFdn Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-impossible/id1169885840?mt=2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://www.alainguillot.com/gregory-zuckerman/ In the world of finance, many of you have heard of Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, or George Soros. They are legendary. But what would you think if I tell you that there is one secretive hedge fund manager who blows all of those legendary investors out of the water? The name if the investor is Jim Simons. To put things into perspective Warren Buffett's average rate of return is about 20% per year. Well, Jim Simon's average rate of return is about 60% per year (after fees). To tell us more, Gregory Zuckerman, an investigative journalist from the Wall Stree Journal, wrote the book "How Jim Simons Solved the Market."

Greg Zuckerman is the author of The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution Gregory Zuckerman is a Special Writer at The Wall Street Journal, a 23-year veteran of the paper and a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award -- the highest honor in business journalism. Greg is the author of The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched a Quant Revolution, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller published by PenguinRandomHouse’s Portfolio division November 2019. The book, which is being translated into 17 languages, was shortlisted by the Financial Times/McKinsey as one of the best business books of 2019. Greg also is the author of The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, a national bestseller published October 2014 that describes how several unlikely individuals created an American energy renaissance that has brought OPEC to its knees. The Frackers was named among 2014’s best books by The Financial Times and Forbes Magazine. Previously, Greg wrote The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller published December 2010. Greg and his two sons wrote Rising Above: How 11 Athletes Overcame Challenges in their Youth to Become Stars and Rising Above-Inspiring Women in Sports, books that are aimed at inspiring young readers with stories of how stars in various sports overcame imposing setbacks in their youth. The books were chosen by Scholastic Teacher magazine as top picks in 2016 and 2017. At the Journal, Greg writes about big financial firms, personalities and trades, as well as hedge funds, the energy revolution and other investing and business topics. Previously, he was the lead writer of the widely read "Heard on the Street" column and covered the credit markets and private-equity beats. Greg appears regularly on CNBC, Fox Business, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg Television and various television networks. He makes regular appearances on National Public Radio, BBC, ABC Radio, Bloomberg Radio and radio stations around the globe. Greg gives speeches to business groups on a variety of topics. Over the past year, he has spoken to groups in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Calgary, Montreal and Niagara Falls. Greg joined the Journal in 1996 after writing about media companies for the New York Post. Previously, he was the managing editor of Mergers & Acquisitions Report, a newsletter published by Investment Dealers' Digest. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1988, Magna Cum Laude.--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/incubatorhedgefund/message

"Jim Simons is the greatest money maker in modern financial history." Since 1988, Renaissance Technologies' flagship Medallion hedge fund founded by Simons has generated average annual returns of 66 percent, racking up trading profits of more than $100 billion. No one in the investment world comes close. Warren Buf­fett, George Soros, Peter Lynch, Steve Cohen, and Ray Dalio all fall short of Simons. How did Jim Simons achieve this feat? Was it that easy for a math researcher at Princeton turned professor at Stony Brook to eventually become a legendary quant investor? In recently published bestseller "The Man Who Solved the Market," WSJ special writer Gregory Zuckerman documented how Simons launched the quant investing revolution, his personal and academic struggles along the way, why it's hard to "beat the market" and even harder to gain insights on the secretive quant hedge fund world. In this interview with Mr. Zuckerman, we ask him how the rise of quant trading impacts the finance world, whether algorithm-driven trading adds volatility to the markets, whether traditional value investing would eventually be rendered obsolete or inferior, the social impact of quant investing and the ultimate vision of traders like Simons. We also discuss Mr. Zuckerman's investigative writing process as he gained unparalleled access to Simons and the former and current employees of RenTech and other quant finance firms. At the end of the interview, Tiger and Princeton math major Michael Psenka goes in detail explaining the mechanism of quant trading and the meaning of complex terms such as "random walk," "Brownian motion," and "stochastic calculus..." Gregory Zuckerman is the author of "The Greatest Trade Ever" and "The Frackers," and is a Special Writer at the Wall Street Journal. At the Journal, Zuckerman writes about financial firms, personalities and trades, as well as hedge funds and other investing and business topics. He's a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award, the highest honor in business journalism. Zuckerman also appears regularly on CNBC, Fox Business and other networks and radio stations around the globe.

Today on the Rational Reminder Podcast we interview a seasoned journalist from The Wall Street Journal, Greg Zuckerman. With 23 years of experience with the media outlet, Greg has written extensively about the most prominent figures in the world of investing, including Jim Simons, John Paulson and Carl Icahn, generally focusing his attention on significant trades, traders and fund managers. In this episode, Greg shares how covering the stories of renowned investors and fund managers have influenced his investment philosophy. Specifically, we get into his book about John Paulson, The Greatest Trade Ever, and why Greg reckons Paulson never managed to achieve the same level of success following this famous trade. His work on the founder of Renaissance Technologies, Jim Simons, also produces fascinating points of discussion, including why their Medallion Fund became so successful and how capping the size of the fund contributed to its outstanding performance. Greg also talks about the idiosyncratic character of Simons, the role of luck, why taking an algorithmic approach to investing is likely to produce good outcomes in the long run, and why people should not always pay attention to the advice of “smart money” sources like hedge funds.  Key Points From This Episode: How covering the stories of prominent fund managers has affected Greg’s investment philosophy. [0:03:27.1] Thoughts on the likelihood of fund managers outperforming the market. [0:05:54.1] Hear about John Paulson’s big trade and why he has failed to outperform since. [0:07:24.1] Find out what made Renaissance Technologies’ Medallion Fund so successful. [0:11:25.1] The role that capping the size of their fund has played in their ongoing success. [0:13:30.1] More about Jim Simons: the mathematician with outstanding people skills. [0:14:46.1] The influence that Simons personally had on the outcome of the Medallion Fund. [0:17:02.1] The unpredictability of luck and intuition Simon’s relied upon in his early days of trading. [0:22:22.5] George’s biggest surprise in writing the story and his general thoughts on market efficiency. [0:24:27.1] Advice about investors making decisions based on the opinions of people like Buffett and Dalio. [0:28:06:7] Algorithmic thinking and other lessons from working with Renaissance Technologies. [0:31:26.1] Why the so-called “smart money” sources like hedge funds are not so smart. [0:34:28.6] Learn how Greg became interested in Wall Street characters and how he gets access to their stories. [0:36:36.6]

Find show notes and other resources hereBrian Keating, Director of the Simons Observatory, interviews Greg Zuckerman, author of the bestselling biography of Jim Simons, “The Man Who Solved The Market”. Portfolio/Penguin has published Greg Zuckerman’s latest book, THE MAN WHO SOLVED THE MARKET: How Jim Simons Launched The Quant Revolution. This book, the culmination of two challenging years of research, is the story of how Simons, a secretive mathematician and code breaker, set out to conquer financial markets, overcoming a series of imposing obstacles to become the greatest moneymaker in modern finance. Recruiting colorful and enigmatic mathematicians and scientists, Simons embraced algorithms and computer models while Mark Zuckerberg was still in grade school, launching a quantitative revolution that has shaken Wall Street. With their winnings, Simons, his colleague Robert Mercer, and others at Renaissance Technologies have upended the worlds of education, science and politics. THE MAN WHO SOLVED THE MARKET was shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year award. The book competed against five of the year’s best nonfiction books for the award. It’s been reviewed in Bloomberg, and the Financial Times, and adapted in the Wall Street Journal. Get your copy here: or from our friends at Warwicks.comFor more, including an excerpt of the book and its many endorsements and reviews, visit here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices