Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Ebook467 pages6 hours
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
The unbelievable story of a secretive mathematician who pioneered the era of the algorithm–and made $23 billion doing it.
The greatest money maker in modern financial history, no other investor–Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, or George Soros–has touched Jim Simons’ 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, and upon his passing, Simons left a legacy of investors who use his mathematical, computer-oriented approach to trading and building wealth.
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 swept 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 will mean for the rest of us long after his death in 2024.
Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
The unbelievable story of a secretive mathematician who pioneered the era of the algorithm–and made $23 billion doing it.
The greatest money maker in modern financial history, no other investor–Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, or George Soros–has touched Jim Simons’ 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, and upon his passing, Simons left a legacy of investors who use his mathematical, computer-oriented approach to trading and building wealth.
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 swept 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 will mean for the rest of us long after his death in 2024.
Unavailable
Related to The Man Who Solved the Market
Related ebooks
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman: Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Roaring 2000'S: Building the Wealth and Lifestyle You Desire in the Greatest Boom in History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Gregory Zuckerman's The Man Who Solved the Market Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete TurtleTrader: How 23 Novice Investors Became Overnight Millionaires Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Damsel in Distressed: My Life in the Golden Age of Hedge Funds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Capital Returns: Investing Through the Capital Cycle: A Money Manager’s Reports 2002-15 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Nick Timiraos's Trillion Dollar Triage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Scott Patterson's The Quants Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Cullen Roche's Pragmatic Capitalism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of Scott Patterson's Dark Pools Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Michael Lewis' Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Edward O. Thorp's A Man for All Markets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrontier Investor: How to Prosper in the Next Emerging Markets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Trades of March 2020: A Shield against Uncertainty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnatomy of the Bear: Lessons from Wall Street's four great bottoms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Diary of a Very Bad Year: Interviews with an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reminiscences of a Stock Operator: The All-Time Wall Street Classic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Flash Boys: by Michael Lewis | Includes Analysis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll the Evil of This World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hedge Fund Market Wizards: How Winning Traders Win Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Irrational Exuberance: Revised and Expanded Third Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Theory of Games and Economic Behavior: 60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Capital Wars: The Rise of Global Liquidity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMarkets Never Forget (But People Do): How Your Memory Is Costing You Money--and Why This Time Isn't Different Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Corporate & Business History For You
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Reckoning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Up Close and All In: Life Lessons from a Wall Street Warrior Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good To Great And The Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Billion Dollar Whale: the bestselling investigation into the financial fraud of the century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Since Yesterday: The 1930s in America, September 3, 1929–September 3, 1939 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Secret History of Brands: The Dark and Twisted Beginnings of the Brand Names We Know and Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Secret Formula: The Inside Story of How Coca-Cola Became the Best-Known Brand in the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Starting Up Silicon Valley: How ROLM Became a Cultural Icon and Fortune 500 Company Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Theory of Money and Credit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLevi's Unbuttoned: The Woke Mob Took My Job But Gave Me My Voice Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why Should Guys Have All the Fun?: An Asian American Story of Love, Marriage, Motherhood, and Running a Billion Dollar Empire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lost Bank: The Story of Washington Mutual-The Biggest Bank Failure in American History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Man Who Solved the Market
Rating: 3.858108054054054 out of 5 stars
4/5
74 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eminently readable, relatively neutral. Would have liked to see more math coverage; could have been through optional footnotes or, better yet, appendices.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Serviceable biography, as far as I know. No real great insight into anything, but interesting given the personalities and the industry.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fairly shallow overview of the Renaissance hedge fund company, especially on founder Jim Simons. There are a few obvious inaccuracies, but it seems to get the big picture right. The book is fairly balanced: on the one hand the company has made a few billionaires and given some NYC math teachers $15K bonuses, while on the other hand it has boosted white supremacy, supported climate denialism and been key to Trump's election. I was surprised to learn how little competition the firm faced at least initially, just DE Shaw and LTCM; it really is a small world.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5You my have heard of the investing term "quant" before. It refers to a person or investing process that is "quantitive," or focused on algorithms and pattern recognition as opposed to traditional investing. The most famous and profitable quant firm is Renaissance Technologies, founded by mathematician Jim Simons. This book tracks Simons' life and career.I picked up this title because I wanted to learn more about quant investing—something I've been hearing about for years but not something I've ever carefully researched. I felt like this book served as a decent non-technical introduction.The basic approach of quant investing is to do statistical analysis of a massive set of data. Because short-term trends have more data points to work with, it is easier to come out ahead in short-term trades. Quant funds look to do high volumes of trades and come out ahead a very small percentage of this time. Like many other modern funds, this makes them reliant on high degrees of leverage to get a good return on capital.There is something fascinating about the investing approach that emerged out of Renaissance's work—they dodn't have stories about why most of their investment strategies work. Zuckerman quotes statistician George Box; "all models are wrong, but some are useful." We're constantly seeking out stories about why the world is the way it is. Although we can derive meaning from these stories, when it comes to something as complex as investing, it is often more limiting than useful to rely on stories for why things do or don't work. It is the sort of approach that would only emerge in a fund staffed by scientists and mathematicians.For many years, Renaissance hasn't allowed any outside investors in its flagship fund, Medallion; it is all money from employees (the fund is limited to $10 billion, and even with massive fees of 5% of principle and 40% of returns, it regularly needs to return investor funds). Often times hedge funds are considered to epitomize what is wrong with the financial system. The fact that Renaissance's most profitable fund doesn't even allow outsiders (who would need to be phenomenally wealthy to participate in the first place), highlights the madness of the current state of wealth inequality in the world.The end of the book explores the ironic political dimensions of Renaissance. Jim Simons is a Democrat, and was one of Hillary Clinton’s largest campaign donors in 2016. At this point in the company’s evolution, Simons had stepped down from the CEO role, and one of the new Co-CEOs was Bob Mercer. Mercer just happens to have been Trump’s largest donor in the 2016 cycle, and also was an investor in Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica, along with his daughter Rebekah. More than anything else, this highlights that both the Republican and Democratic parties represent the shared whims of the neoliberal elite rather than some significant portion of the populace.The book is an interesting portrait of one of the most influential financiers of the past generation. That said, it fails to rise to the bar set by books like “Barbarian’s at the Gate” by Bryan Burrough in that the book lacks a compelling narrative arc.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was an audiobook for me. The story was rather incredible especially considering some of the participants and the quite scientific approach they took, so different from traditional financial circles. But then again there in probably lies the answer to how the market was "solved." There is no doubt they were and seem to continue to be successful in pulling numbers from the market, but the roller coaster ride always seemed to put them on the precipice of disaster.The book itself was enjoyable as the suspense and personalities involved in the drama of tackling the financial markets from a different strategy kept me interested in discovering the next turn. Almost like a real crime mystery book. The quants did seem to prevail and of course we still don't know exactly how they did it as the book does not really go there. It winds up with the creator of the funds Jim Simon seemingly sailing off into the sunset as he approaches his 90's, a chain smoker at that! I found it amusing how he portrays this liberal bent of lets make everyone pays their fair share for the good of the down trodden. Yet they really didn't as the exploited every loophole they could to keep those riches in their own pockets. And well lived lives of luxury beyond luxury on the spoils of their gains.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Excellent Biography, I enjoyed reading political factions within a company. It seems that it can be applied everywhere.
I would recommend this to people who are interested in Biographies, Investment, Wall-Street.
Deus Vult,
Gottfried