New book to be published Nov 5th by Gregory Zuckerman.
There's a good excerpt in WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-making-of-the-worlds-greatest-investor-11572667202
Here's the beginning:
The Making of the World’s Greatest Investor Jim Simons was a middle-aged mathematician in a strip mall who knew little about finance. He had to overcome his own doubts to turn Wall Street on its head.
by Gregory Zuckerman
Jim Simons sat in a storefront office in a dreary Long Island strip mall. He was next to a women’s clothing boutique, two doors from a pizza joint and across from a tiny, one-story train station. His office had beige wallpaper, a single computer terminal, and spotty phone service.
It was early summer 1978, weeks after Mr. Simons ditched a distinguished mathematics career to try his hand trading currencies. Forty years old, with a slight paunch and long, graying hair, the former professor hungered for serious wealth. But this wry, chain-smoking teacher had never taken a finance class, didn’t know much about trading, and had no clue how to estimate earnings or predict the economy.
For a while, Mr. Simons traded like most everyone else, relying on intuition and old-fashioned research. But the ups and downs left him sick to his stomach. Mr. Simons recruited renowned mathematicians and his results improved, but the partnerships eventually crumbled amid sudden losses and unexpected acrimony. Returns at his hedge fund were so awful he had to halt its trading and employees worried he’d close the business.
Today, Mr. Simons is considered the most successful money maker in the history of modern finance. Since 1988, his flagship Medallion fund has generated average annual returns of 66% before charging hefty investor fees—39% after fees—racking up trading gains of more than $100 billion. No one in the investment world comes close. Warren Buffett, George Soros, Peter Lynch, Steve Cohen, and Ray Dalio all fall short.
Submitted November 02, 2019 at 12:37AM by ron_leflore https://ift.tt/34rTQyp
