The Man Who Solved the Market

Bestselling author and veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman answers the question investors have been asking for decades: How did Jim Simons do it? Jim Simons is the greatest money maker in modern financial history. His track record bests those of legendary investors including Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, and George Soros. Yet Simons and his strategies are shrouded in mystery. Wall Street insiders have long craved a view into Simons's singular mind, as well as the definitive account of how his secretive hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, came to dominate financial markets. Bestselling author and Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman delivers the goods. After a legendary career as a mathematician at MIT and Harvard, and a stint breaking Soviet code for the U.S. government, Simons set out to conquer financial markets with a radical approach. He hired mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists, most of whom knew little about finance. Experts scoffed as Simons built Renaissance Technologies from a dreary Long Island strip mall. He amassed piles of data and developed algorithms to hunt for deeply hidden patterns in the numbers--patterns that reveal rules governing all markets. Simons and his colleagues became some of the richest individuals in the world and their data-driven approach launched a quantitative revolution on Wall Street. They also anticipated dramatic shifts in society. Eventually, governments, sports teams, hospitals, and businesses in almost every industry embraced Simons's methods. Simons and his team used their newfound wealth to upend society. Simons has become a major influence in scientific research, education, and politics, while senior executive Robert Mercer is more responsible than anyone else for Donald Trump's victorious presidential campaign. The Renaissance team's models didn't prepare executives for the ensuing backlash. The Man Who Solved the Market is the dramatic story of how Jim Simons and a group of unlikely mathematicians remade Wall Street and transformed the world....

“Captivating.” —New York Times
 
“A compelling read.” —The Economist
 
“Reads like a delicious page-turning novel.” —Barry Ritholtz, Bloomberg
 
“One of the most important stories of our time.” —Financial Times
 
“Zuckerman brings the reader so close to the firm’s inner workings that you can almost catch a whiff of the billionaire’s Merit cigarette.” —Brandon Kochkodin, *Bloomberg

• “A gripping biography of investment game changer Jim Simons… readers looking to understand how the economy got where it is should eat this up.” —Publishers Weekly

  "Worthwhile reading for budding plutocrats and numerate investors alike." —Kirkus

  “Immensely enjoyable.” —Edward O. Thorp, author of A Man for All Markets
   
  “An extremely well-written and engaging book . . . a must read, and a fun one at that.” —Mohamed A. El-Erian, author of The Only Game in Town
   
  “Leave it to the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Zuckerman to lay open the golden mysteries of quantitative investing. With this fine, humane, and eye-opening book, he’s well and truly broken the code.” —James Grant, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer

  "Page-turning tale…bravura storytelling." —Gary Shteyngart, author of Lake Success

Autorentext

Gregory Zuckerman is the author of The Greatest Trade Ever and The Frackers, and is a Special Writer at the Wall Street Journal. At the Journal, Zuckerman writes about financial firms, personalities and trades, as well as hedge funds and other investing and business topics. He's a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award, the highest honor in business journalism. Zuckerman also appears regularly on CNBC, Fox Business and other networks and radio stations around the globe.

Klappentext

**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.

Jim Simons is the greatest money maker in modern financial history. No other investor--Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, or George Soros--can touch his 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; Simons is worth twenty-three billion dollars.

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 sweeping 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 means for the rest of us.

Leseprobe

Introduction

You do know— no one will speak with you, right?”
I was picking at a salad at a fish restaurant in Cambridge, Massa­chusetts, in early September 2017, trying my best to get a British mathematician named Nick Patterson to open up about his former company, Renaissance Technologies. I wasn’t having much luck.
I told Patterson that I wanted to write a book about how James Simons, Renaissance’s founder, had created the greatest moneymaking machine in financial history. Renaissance generated so much wealth that Simons and his colleagues had begun to wield enormous influence in the worlds of politics, science, education, and philanthropy. Anticipating dramatic societal shifts, Simons harnessed algorithms, computer models, and big data before Mark Zuckerberg and his peers had a chance to finish nursery school.
Patterson wasn’t very encouraging. By then, Simons and his representa­tives had told me they weren’t going to provide much help, either. Renais­sance executives and others close to Simons—even those I once considered friends—wouldn’t return my calls or emails. Even archrivals begged out of meetings at Simons’s request, as if he was a Mafia boss they dared not offend.
Over and over, I was reminded of the iron-clad, thirty-page nondisclo­sure agreements the firm forced employees to sign, preventing even retirees from divulging much. I got it, guys. But come on. I’d been at the Wall Street Journal for a couple of decades; I knew how the game was played. Subjects, even recalcitrant ones, usually come around. After all, who doesn’t want a book written about them? Jim Simons and Renaissance Technologies, ap­parently.
I wasn’t entirely shocked. Simons and his team are among the most se­cretive traders Wall Street has encountered, loath to drop even a hint of how they’d conquered financial markets, lest a competitor seize on any clue. Em­ployees avoid media appearances and steer clear of industry conferences and most public gatherings. Simons once quoted Benj…