Jim Simons
Jim Simons founded the Renaissance Technologies. Prior to his financial career, he instructed mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and was a cryptanalyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses. Simons has given $2.7 billion to philanthropic causes over his lifetime. He established Simons Foundation and is the primary funder of Math For America.
Jim Simons Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Founder
Academic History
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PhD, Mathematics
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Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics
Jim Simons, the Numbers King
Algorithms made him a Wall Street billionaire. His new research center helps scientists mine data for the common good.
The most successful money maker in modern finance has one simple rule of thumb for investing: remove all emotion.
Jim Simons revolutionized investing when he left academia in 1978, at the age of forty, to begin trading. Relying on his experience and skills as a decorated mathematician, professor, and code breaker, Simons looked at the market in a fundamentally different way when he launched his quantitative-focused fund Renaissance Technologies in 1982 from a strip mall in Long Island.
Jim Simons demonstrated 35% CAGR returns from 1990 to mid-2018.
He generated 71.8% from 1994 to 2014—the best investing record ever recorded.
Learning Lessons:
- Dec 24 2018 - during the largest market correction in 7 years, he considered a big short bet against stocks. This was not part of his normal strategy that made him successful previously. A colleague luckily talked him out of it. This was wise advice as the markets had just bottomed. Lesson = It's really hard to time the markets if even the best traders can't do it well.