The man who solved the market
Jim Simons is the greatest money maker in modern financial history. No other investor--Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, or George Soros--can touch his record. Since 1988, Renaissance's signature Medallion fund has generated average annual returns of 66 percent. The firm has earned profits of more than $100 billion; Simons is worth twenty-three billion dollars. Drawing on unprecedented access to Simons and dozens of current and former employees, Zuckerman, a veteran Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, tells the gripping story of how a world-class mathematician and former code breaker mastered the market. Simons pioneered a data-driven, algorithmic approach that's sweeping the world. As Renaissance became a market force, its executives began influencing the world beyond finance. Simons became a major figure in scientific research, education, and liberal politics. Senior executive Robert Mercer is more responsible than anyone else for the Trump presidency, placing Steve Bannon in the campaign and funding Trump's victorious 2016 effort. Mercer also impacted the campaign behind Brexit. The Man Who Solved the Market is a portrait of a modern-day Midas who remade markets in his own image, but failed to anticipate how his success would impact his firm and his country. It's also a story of what Simons's revolution means for the rest of us.
Stats for nerds
33recommend
55mentions
50people
2019–2026years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- There is a great line in the Man Who Solved The Market [0] about RenTech:
Paraphrasing:
"They went out of their way to try and fill in gaps in the historical market data. Over time, they got so good at predicting prices movements that they built algorithms to fill in the gaps."
Highly recommend the book if you are interested in the history of algorithmic trading.
0 -
- Read "the man who solved the market". It's a remarkable story. He was a remarkable dude, extremely smart, has given a lot of money to promote math and science.
- https://www.quantamagazine.org/about/ says "launched by the Simons Foundation in 2012"
and https://www.simonsfoundation.org/about/ has "Since its founding in 1994 by Jim and Marilyn Simons"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons explains how Jim Simons got rich.
The book 'The Man Who Solved the Market' - https://www.gregoryzuckerman.com/the-books/the-man-who-solve... is a nice read.
HN discussion on a review of the book - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29392041
- If you're curious about Simons, and the wikipedia page is not enough, I found "The Man Who Solved the Market" by Gregory Zuckerman an interesting read.
- I recommend you read the life of Jim Simons (through The Man who Solved the Market) as well as a recent HN thread on DeepSeek showing how their trading arm finances the whole company.
There is much more nuance in this world than your post implies.
- For inspiration, I highly recommend "The Man Who Solved the Market" about James Simons and Renaissance Technologies. Some of Ernie Chan's books are great for learning about the basics, but ultimately finding an edge is the most difficult part. Books can teach you some of the best practices for researching edges, how to avoid common pitfalls in backtesting, etc, but no book will ever lay out the details of any strategy that contains alpha of course.
Grizzly Bulls is currently a one man (and wife) venture :)
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