05/10/2024
From the New York Times’ obituary section:
Jim Simons, Math Genius Who Conquered Wall Street, Dies at 86
Using advanced computers, he went from M.I.T. professor to multibillionaire. His Medallion fund had 66 percent average annual returns for decades.
By Jonathan Kandell
May 10, 2024Jim Simons, the prizewinning mathematician who abandoned a stellar academic career, then plunged into finance — a world he knew nothing about — and became one of the most successful Wall Street investors ever, died on Friday in his home in Manhattan. He was 86. …
After publishing breakthrough studies in mathematics that would play a seminal role in quantum field theory, string theory and condensed matter physics, Mr. Simons decided to apply his genius to a more prosaic subject — making as much money as he could in as short a time as possible.
So at age 40, he opened a storefront office in a Long Island strip mall and set about proving that trading commodities, currencies, stocks and bonds could be nearly as predictable as calculus and partial differential equations. Spurning financial analysts and business school graduates, he hired like-minded mathematicians and scientists.
Mr. Simons equipped his colleagues with advanced computers to process torrents of data filtered through mathematical models, and turned the four investment funds in his new firm, Renaissance Technologies, into virtual money printing machines.
Medallion, the largest of these funds, earned more than $100 billion in trading profits in the 30 years following its inception in 1988. It generated an unheard-of 66 percent average annual return during that period.
That was a far better long-term performance than famed investors like Warren Buffett and George Soros achieved.
“No one in the investment world even comes close,” wrote Gregory Zuckerman, one of the few journalists to interview Mr. Simons and the author of his biography, “The Man Who Solved the Market.”
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