Reviews
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman
rberenguel's review against another edition
5.0
Very interesting, with a surprising amount of mentions of familiar mathematicians
flexcent's review against another edition
4.5
Thoroughly enjoyed this listen. Though that might have to do with it telling the origin story of the field I want to go into. There's only two chapters I didn't really love, which took a detour to talk about the political beliefs of renaissance's co- executive officer.
rick2's review against another edition
4.0
Very interesting book about historically tightlipped fund. Author has an impressive level of access and historical knowledge, I know this because I’ve watched just about every available YouTube video that Jim Simons has out there. I never realize just how thin the margins were on stat arb. One of the positives and negatives of the book are the close inside sources that make me both marvel at and wonder to the level of access the author had. You’re not getting all this from a disgruntled employee or two.
My best guess is that we can look to this publication as the moment when RenTec jumped the shark and has decided to coast on their reputation. Jim’s focused on protein folding and is happy with doing a victory lap for the next decade as his fund regresses to the mean.
My best guess is that we can look to this publication as the moment when RenTec jumped the shark and has decided to coast on their reputation. Jim’s focused on protein folding and is happy with doing a victory lap for the next decade as his fund regresses to the mean.
badoit90's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 Stars // The real Market Wizard
Investing your money into one of the most popular Index funds, the S&P500, would have given you an average annual return just shy of 10% within the last few decades.
Warren Buffet, commonly seen as the greatest investor of all time, managed to double that and have an average annual return of roughly 20%.
Unbeknownst to many then, Jim Simons, a mathematician turned investor, somehow seemed to have cracked the secret formula and achieved a staggering 66% yearly return with his fund since 1988.
Gregory Zuckerman, a business journalist at the Wall Street Journal, followed Simons and his peers for years in order retell the mans life story in this book. It is at times a gripping tale of greed, power and a bunch of nerds with a knack for numbers - other times it feels unnecessarily drawn out and thin in its ultimate take-aways. Unfortunately, but understandably so, Simons ‘secret formula’ is never given away as its all relying on computer models and arbitrage data processing.
While the book captures the personality of the enigmatic Simons, it is somewhat hagiographic and lacks critical analysis of his flaws or mistakes. Additionally, there is little discussion of the wider societal implications of quantitative finance, such as income inequality or the ethics of using massive amounts of data to gain an edge in the market.
The Man Who Solved the Market is an informative and engaging read that provides a rare glimpse into the world of high finance and the mind of a true genius. There is, however, no real take-away for us small investors here other than sticking to the good ol’ S&P500.
Investing your money into one of the most popular Index funds, the S&P500, would have given you an average annual return just shy of 10% within the last few decades.
Warren Buffet, commonly seen as the greatest investor of all time, managed to double that and have an average annual return of roughly 20%.
Unbeknownst to many then, Jim Simons, a mathematician turned investor, somehow seemed to have cracked the secret formula and achieved a staggering 66% yearly return with his fund since 1988.
Gregory Zuckerman, a business journalist at the Wall Street Journal, followed Simons and his peers for years in order retell the mans life story in this book. It is at times a gripping tale of greed, power and a bunch of nerds with a knack for numbers - other times it feels unnecessarily drawn out and thin in its ultimate take-aways. Unfortunately, but understandably so, Simons ‘secret formula’ is never given away as its all relying on computer models and arbitrage data processing.
While the book captures the personality of the enigmatic Simons, it is somewhat hagiographic and lacks critical analysis of his flaws or mistakes. Additionally, there is little discussion of the wider societal implications of quantitative finance, such as income inequality or the ethics of using massive amounts of data to gain an edge in the market.
The Man Who Solved the Market is an informative and engaging read that provides a rare glimpse into the world of high finance and the mind of a true genius. There is, however, no real take-away for us small investors here other than sticking to the good ol’ S&P500.
rwarner's review against another edition
4.0
Well-written story about Renaissance and Medallion and how big data has influenced investing. Don't expect critical insights that will ignite your ML efforts to greatness. Instead, this is the story of the people and motivations involved. Good stuff.
olliewould's review
Couldn't finish in time. But it was an interesting bio/vague analysis of how he built the investing strategy. Given Renaissance is so guarded and secretive, there are really no details on its strategy, other than noting they build out analyses on vast amounts of market data, and then build short-term trading algorithms to profit from small market inefficiencies on very short-term trades.
seeyf's review against another edition
3.0
Zuckerman tells the story from Renaissance’s shaky beginning to having the highest of any fund in the world. Due to the company’s strict non-disclosure agreements, nothing detailed is revealed about how the firm actually works, save for the fact that extensive data mining and mathematical analysis allows them to consistently make about 50.75% of their trades profitable, and that small winning margin when compounded results in their large earnings. The book also shows the impact of unimaginable wealth on these people who previously earned a modest salary in academia, in particular how Robert Mercer used it to fund the Trump campaign and the disagreements that arose from thus within the company.