The Man Who Solved the Market Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

Brief Summary

Simons began as a talented mathematician at a young age. He then worked to break codes before founding his hedge fund management firm, Renaissance Technologies. Simons changed the way global finance works. And with his successes came profit, much of which he donated to charity.

About the Author

Gregory Zuckerman is a writer for the Wall Street Journal as well as a non fiction book author. He graduated from Brandeis, Magna Cum Laude in 1988. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and 2 sons and works at the New York City bureau of the Wall Street Journal.

He previously worked as a managing editor of Mergers & Acquisitions Report, a newsletter published by Investment Dealers’ Digest. He then worked for the New York Post covering media companies. In 1996, he moved on to work for The Wall Street journal as a financial reporter. He now focuses on financial trades, hedge funds, private equity firms, energy revolution, and other investing and business topics.

Topics

Biography & Memoir

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Key Insights

Jim Simons observes patterns in the financial market. And he understands behind these ups and downs is the science of mathematics.

Because of his ability to understand the market, he can predict it, which in turn, makes him a lot of money.

Simons is the most successful market investor in today’s world. But, Simons is even more than that, he is the founder of the hedge fund firm, Renaissance Technologies, a geometer, a code-breaker, and a philanthropist.

“We’re right 50.75 percent of the time . . . but we’re 100 percent right 50.75 percent of the time,” Mercer told a friend. “You can make billions that way.”- Gregory Zuckerman

In, “The Man Who Solved the Market” by Gregory Zucker you will get a good look at Simon’s life and learn some valuable information along the way.

Simons Always Loved Math

Jim Simons was born loving numbers. He was born in 1938 in Brookline, Massachusetts. Jim was an only child in his Jewish-American family. His parents were named Marcia and Matthew.

At the age of three, Simons was solving complex math equations. His parents discovered him dividing numbers by two as a toddler, all the way up to the number 1024.

Another example of Simon’s early love of math was when he was shocked, at the age of four, when his father pulled over to fill up the car with gas. Simon concluded that if the tank was half full then it would never run out, there would always be half of whatever was remaining left, no matter how small.

“Scientists and mathematicians are trained to dig below the surface of the chaotic, natural world to search for unexpected simplicity, structure, and even beauty.”- Gregory Zuckerman

Without his knowledge, four-year-old Simons had begun questioning a classic math problem. This was a problem that the Greek philosopher, Zeno, had puzzled. The question is: If you always have to travel half of the remaining distance before you get to where you want to be, how will you ever get there?

When Simons finished school he was encouraged to go into medicine by his family’s physician. However, Simons wasn’t too keen on that idea.

He decided to attend MIT to get a B.A. in mathematics. At first, he struggled and ended up failing a few tests. He decided to stop for one summer and really learn to understand the more complex mathematical theories.

“‘When I heard MIT didn’t have a football team, I knew it was the school for me,’ he says.”-Gregory Zuckerman

After that, he gained a better understanding of everything and he began to notice the universal system of math. He thought he was looking at a code that could help to explain all of life’s vast and mysterious occurrences.

Simons’ Work With Codes

Simons had many academic achievements at both MIT and Berkley. After that, he went on a lookout for a lecturing post.

Simons completed his Ph.D. at Berkeley in only two years. His degree focused on work about geometry and multidimensional curved spaces. This secured him a teaching position at Harvard University.

Simons was a well-liked...