The Man Who Solved the Market
13 July 2023
Today I finished what was ostensibly a biography of Jim Simons, The Man Who Solved the Market by Gregory Zuckerman. Having never heard of Simons and considering myself a cognoscenti of Wall Street lore I couldn't help picking it up at the Zürich airport last month. I've actually decided to allow myself one book whenever I'm in an airport now, rather than regretting not having bought something later. Jim Simons was a successful mathematician who built a solid math department as chair at Stony Brook before leaving to tackle Wall Street. His Renaissance Technologies used computer modeling to guide trades and beat the market for decades, but kicked out all their investors early on to just make money for the employees without getting too big. Still, they made billions and beat the market and every other fund on Wall Street. The second half of the book focuses more on the brilliant mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists RenTec hired along the way. Definitely an interesting read with a surprisingly happy ending (as of 2018 when the book was published; in 2021 they had to pay $7 billion to the IRS in the biggest settlement for back taxes ever). If you're interested in quantitive finance or the Street it's worthwhile to pick up.
