20 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
bmitcMay 2024Strongly recommends
While I'm not one to fawn after billionaires, I found his life story and personality really fascinating. He really seemed to maintain a humble approach, and in the Numberphile interview, which is excellent, he really emphasized the notion of luck in success. He donated a ton of money in very targeted ways that have been extremely successful. I think because of his humble approach, lack of self-promotion, etc., he's a bit unknown outside certain circles, but his impact in certain areas has been big. While I wish that our country didn't have to rely on billionaires spearheading initiatives, which often goes the wrong way, Simons was absolutely an example of one of the good ones. ▶ this video
in “Jim Simons has died” · View on HN
WestCoastJustinJul 2023Recommends
You can troll through the job postings of most of these companies and learn about their org structures and tech stacks. When I looked almost nothing is public other than older documentaries. Nanex had some neat wiring diagrams and a few videos clips if you google them. Don't get too excited you're not going to learn about some super secret strategy or anything. This book was good [link] in that is sort of explains at a high level how you'd build a company to look at something like this (think it was one of the last chapters). You'll need extremely deep/skilled hardware/networking groups, data acquisitions (think packet capture to data) folks, people to clean and maintenance massive the data repos, internal tool teams, quantitative analysts, traders, management/admin, etc. At this level just getting the fiber to each exchange likely costs many many millions. When you go and look through those job postings you can sort of slot these into your mental model of this flow and start to see how it might be put together. That book is good but if you are new to the topic it will be almost unreadable. At least it was for me. I had to read it 3-4 times over the years and still find new things as my knowledge grows. I don't know if rentec is a HFT firm or what strategies they use but this was a really good interview with one of the founders ▶ this video .
in “Ask HN: I am interested in reading about techniques HFT firms use” · View on HN
bmitcFeb 2023Recommends
It's because James Simons is a serious and actually intelligent person with depth of knowledge, and thus, he is one that doesn't need to opine on random things. He also makes a lot of money in a very secretive way. I'm not sure why anyone expects him to expound in detail on how Renaissance Technologies does it. Simons also spends more money than some governments on very serious and advanced scientific research. I suppose he's rather busy with all his investments and philanthropy. Musk is busy selling himself and filling his unfillable ego. You can see in Simons' TED interview with Chris Anderson how he gets rather annoyed with Chris at times, particularly when Chris mentions Simons' "amazing mind" at around 8:30. Simons seems, to me, to be a rather pragmatic and humble person who doesn't particularly enjoy flattery. Chris even throws out a quote by Musk at the very end of the interview, fishing for some similar platitude from Simons, but Simons deftly avoids giving out such an empty quote. [link] Most interestingly, you can tell Simons' like of science and mathematics and alludes to his interest when he mentions his investment into the origins of life towards the end. There are two interesting talks or interviews I know of with Simons: * Full-length Numberphile interview: ▶ this video * His lecture on his life given at MIT: [link] Simons actually attributes a lot of his success to luck.
in “A Jim Simons Market Mystery – Solved? Not:-)” · View on HN
WestCoastJustinJun 2022Recommends
More of a Musk fan myself. Since you mentioned him, Jim Simons has a really good interview too and it was pretty cool to hear his story [1]. Worth a watch if you haven't seen it and are into RenTec. [1] ▶ this video
in “A chat with Ray Dalio” · View on HN
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erk__May 2022Recommends
Numberphile have done a pretty good interview with him which is worth a watch. There is both a full length 1 hour interview [0] and a cut down interview running 18 minutes [1]. [0]: ▶ this video [1]: [link]
in “The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting” · View on HN
ljosifovJan 2021Recommends
Collected takeaways from “The Man Who Solved the Market” - a (good) book about Jim Simons and RenTec that ring plausible to me at [link] . A good Simons interview (by Numberphile) is ▶ this video .
in “Jim Simons proved the textbooks wrong, almost” · View on HN
leto_iiJan 2020Recommends
> The Medallion fund has been closed to external capital since 1993, and analysis of the flagship fund’s annual returns suggests that significant distributions are made each year to keep the fund about the same size. For example, despite the fact that Medallion reported annual net returns above 29 percent every year between 2010 and 2018, the fund’s assets under management stayed at about $10 billion throughout that period. This suggests to me that whatever opportunities they're exploiting, they would vanish quickly if they would increase the fund's size (e.g. by compounding returns). It's worth taking a look at the Numberphile interview with Simons ( ▶ this video ). There he suggests that they're mostly using ML and other relatively simple techniques, with a bit of more advanced math when it comes to predicting how a trade will move the market. This chimes in well with the idea that they have to keep their trades relatively small in order to remain this profitable.
in “Medallion Fund “Stretches Explanation to the Limit,” Professor Claims” · View on HN
mellingNov 2019Recommends
Article is about this book that will be released on Tuesday. [link] This Numberphile interview with him is interesting: ▶ this video
in “How Jim Simons Built the World’s Most Lucrative Black Box” · View on HN
mellingSep 2019Recommends
For anyone interested in a great story about a world class mathematician who built a company that has used algorithms to beat the market for the last few decades, James Simons has an impressive record: [link] ▶ this video [link] One other thing, the Simons Foundation funds Quanta Magazine, whose articles frequently appear on HN: [link]
in “Day Trading for a Living?” · View on HN
xviiaMay 2016Recommends
Ah, now I understand. For others: Simons Foundations --> James Simons, who is a hedge fund mananger worth ~ $14billion. Excellent interview with Numberphile here: ▶ this video
in “Mathematicians Bridge Finite-Infinite Divide” · View on HN
andrewtbhamOct 2015Recommends
The title makes it out like he is a reclusive lone wolf programmer. He is the CEO of renaissance technologies, a hedge fund with 275 employees. I really feel misled and like they trying to portray him as a mysterious, dangerous loner. As a computer programmer, I take offense. Here is an interview with James Simmons, the founder of Renaissance, fascinating guy. ▶ this video
in “How a reclusive computer programmer became a GOP money powerhouse” · View on HN
adenadelSep 2015Recommends
If you found this interview interesting, there is a longer interview that goes into most of the same topics as well as several others here ▶ this video
in “A rare interview with the mathematician who cracked Wall Street” · View on HN
max_May 2024Cites it
They have many sponsors. Jim Discovered their channel, liked it and invited them to his New York Apartment for an interview. [1] From that time forward, all Numberphile videos have "Simons Foundation" at the end listed as a sponsor. [1]: Here is the video ▶ this video
in “Jim Simons has died” · View on HN
mellingMar 2021Cites it
Funded by billionaire mathematician and hedge fund founder, where the algorithms make all the decisions ▶ this video 1976 winner of the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry [link]
in “Statistics Postdoc Tames Decades-Old Geometry Problem” · View on HN
mdonahoeNov 2019Cites it
I don't subscribe to wsj, so I can't read the article, but Simons was on Numberphile a while back. ▶ this video
in “The making of Jim Simons” · View on HN
bitanarchAug 2017Cites it
What's your view on cases like Renaissance Technologies? There's an interview online on James Simons ( ▶ this video ) - and he explicitly talked about using math models to detect anomalies, e.g. trends. It's also known that they've used Hidden Markov Models, at least in the early days.
in “Fitting to Noise or Nothing at All: Machine Learning in Markets” · View on HN
mellingJul 2015Cites it
It's great when you can use math, and remove humans from the process once the algorithms are written, to do something people thought was impossible. Was never trying to imply that's the pinnacle. You've got Gordon Gecko and then you have James Simons. ▶ this video Maybe the U.S. wouldn't rank so low in math and science if kids saw a few more career possibilities. [link]
in “Bernoulli: Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk (1738) [pdf]” · View on HN
mellingJul 2015Cites it
Yes, I know that. We have all watched James Simons, right? ▶ this video What does that have to do with being a more appropriate news headline? I was responding to the 'clickbait' comment.
in “At 78, Scientist Is Starting a Hedge Fund” · View on HN