Who is Jim Simons?

The name Jim Simons is familiar with those who explore backgrounds and strategies of some of the world’s best investors. He is another guy I would rank as one of the world’s guru investors. In the following sections, I will introduce Jim and tell you some more fascinating information about him and his career. Enjoy!

Jim Simons – Background

James Harris Simons was born on 25 April 1938. He is an American mathematician, billionaire hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund based in New York. He and his fund are known to be quantitative investors, using mathematical models and algorithms to make investment gains from market inefficiencies.

Outside of the finance world, Simons is very well known for his studies on pattern recognition. He developed the Chern–Simons form (with Shiing-Shen Chern), and contributed to the development of string theory by providing a theoretical framework to combine geometry and topology with quantum field theory.

Jim Simons – Education

Jim received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958 and a PhD, also in mathematics, from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961, at the relatively young age of 23.

Jim Simons – Investment Successes

For more than two decades, Simons’ Renaissance Technologies’ hedge funds, which trade in markets around the world, have employed mathematical models to analyze and execute trades, many automated. Renaissance uses computer-based models to predict price changes in financial instruments. These models are based on analyzing as much data as can be gathered, then looking for non-random movements to make predictions.

Medallion, the main fund, which is closed to outside investors, has earned over $100 billion in trading profits since its inception in 1988. This translates to an amazing 66.1% gross return or a 39.1% average net return between 1988 – 2018.

His current net worth is estimated to be around $US21.9billion.

Jim Simons – What is he doing now?

Jim Simons and his second wife, Marilyn Hawrys Simons, co-founded the Simons Foundation in 1994, a charitable organization that supports projects related to education and health, in addition to scientific research. The Simons Foundation established the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) in 2003 as a scientific initiative within the Simons Foundation’s suite of programs. SFARI’s mission is to improve the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of autism spectrum disorders.

In 2004, Simons founded Math for America with an initial pledge of $25 million from the Simons Foundation, a pledge he later doubled in 2006.

In 2008, he was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha’s Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame along with Alfred Jones, Bruce Kovner, David Swensen, George Soros, Jack Nash, Julian Roberston, Kenneth Griffin, Leon Levy, Louis Bacon, Michael Steinhardt, Paul Tudor Jones, Seth Klarman and Steven A. Cohen.

He was named by the Financial Times in 2006 as “the world’s smartest billionaire”.

Jim Simons – Interesting quotes

A few interesting quotes from Jim Simons follow:

• Investing and speech recognition are very similar. In both, you’re trying to guess the next thing that happens.
• I was either going to write a thesis in mathematics, or trade soy beans because it was impossible to do both at the same time so I gave that up. But always in the back of my mind I liked this trading business and found it interesting
• Luck, is largely responsible for my reputation for genius. I don’t walk into the office in the morning and say, ‘Am I smart today?’ I walk in and wonder, ‘Am I lucky today?

 

Your PROFITABLE ACTION STEPS this time around:

1. Continue to expand your knowledge regarding some of the world’s great investors. If you want to dig deeper on Jim Simons there is some great reading including “The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution”
2. Check out my recent article on “Who is George Soros?”.
3. If you haven’t already, go to my home page and download my Passive Income Guide. It describes a number of ways to earn income with minimal ongoing effort (in most cases) and it’s ABSOLUTELY FREE.

 

Stay safe, healthy and wise and most importantly of all, take ACTION.