This week, we speak with Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman, a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award for business journalism who writes about big trades, big firms and big personalities. His latest book, “whose most recent book is The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution,” will be released Nov. 5.
Zuckerman traces the history of Jim Simons, from codebreaker for the NSA, to building the mathematics division of SUNY Stony Brook University into a national powerhouse to the rise of Renaissance Technologies.
The crown jewel of the Renaissance hedge fund is the Medallion fund: the returns were eye-popping: from 1989 to 2018, the fund returned 66% per year. Simons soon figured out that the Medallion methodology would only scale so far, and so not too long after those returns became spectacular, he returned all of the assets to clients, only allowing Renaissance employees to participate in the fund. It becomes the ultimate talent attraction and retention tool.
His favorite books are here; A transcript of our conversation will be available here.
My full review of “The Man Who Solved the Market” is here.
You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras on Apple iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, Google, Bloomberg, and Stitcher. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.
Next week, we speak with Nobel Laureate Gene Fama and DFA founder David Booth about their 50 year relationship in the markets, streaming live from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, in a special edition of Masters in Business Live.
Greg Zuckerman Authored Books
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman
The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters by Gregory Zuckerman
The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History by Gregory Zuckerman
Greg Zuckerman Favorite Books
Just Kids by Patti Smith
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street by David McClintick
