The Quant Trader, The Worlds smartest Billionaire or, as his biography says, The man who solved the market. These are all the nicknames for Jim Simons, which he fully earned thanks his work and extremely successful career. In this article you will find 10 exciting points about his life as well as 3 interesting quotes of Jim Simons about the markets.
10 points you need to know about Simons
- At the age of 17, Jim Simons started studying Mathematics at MIT. His career in academia only started there. He earned his doctorate at the age of 23 at University of Berkeley.
- Chern-Simons form, which is an important mathematical theory played a crucial role in topological quantum field theory.
- One of his first jobs was working for National Security Agency, where he was working as a code cracker during Vietnam War. However, due to differences in opinions about the war he was fired.
- At the age of 44, the mathematician who had by then won many different awards and helped to made significant progress in the fields of mathematics (and later on in physics) has finally decided to use his knowledge and created the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies.
- Renaissance Technologies and especially Jim Simons decided to use different approach to investing and trading. That is why most of the employees did not have background in finance. Most of them came from mathematical background, physics, statistics and IT.
- Thanks to this special combination, Renaissance Technologies traded complex mathematical formulas, which at that time was extremely rare and rather pioneering approach to trading.
- Nevertheless, his pioneering approach led to one of his fund, Medallion, which is part of the Renaissance Technologies, to earn more than 35 % for more than 20 year between 1994 and 2014.
- Due to the success of his fund, Jim Simons was earning extreme amount of money. In 2019, his net worth was approximately 21,6 billion dollars. By 2021 it was approximately 23,5 billion dollars, making him not only the richest hedge fund manager, but also 23rd richest American.
- Jim Simons has already made very charitable donations. According to some estimates he has already given about 3 billion dollars to charities.
- All of his successes are captured in book that was solely written about his career. The book is named
The man who solved the market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution.
- We strongly recommend this book for anyone who wants to know more about one of the most successful hedge fund manager ever.
Top 3 quotes of Jim Simons
His career (just like his biography) was not only successful but also full of interesting quote. Some of the most important are below:
„Past performance is the best predictor of success.“
„In this business it´s easy to confuse luck with brains.“
„One can predict the course of a comet more easily than one can predict the course of Citigroup´s stock. The attractiveness, of course, is that you can make more money successfully predicting a stock than you can a comet.“
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