Jim Simons net worth
What is Jim Simons’ net worth?
Jim Simons
Net Worth: $22bn
Age: 84
Born: April 25, 1938
Gender: Male
Height: 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)
Country of Origin: US
Source of Wealth: Mathematician
Last Updated: August 2, 2022
Introduction
Jim Simons is an American mathematician, billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist.
Simons is best known as a quantitative investor. In 1982, Simons founded Renaissance Technologies, a private hedge fund based in Setauket-East Setauket, New York.
As of August 2022, Jim Simons’ net worth is approximately $22bn.
Early Life
James “Jim” Harris Simons was born on the 25th of April 1938, in Newton. Simons is the son of an American Jewish family and the only child of Marcia and Matthew Simons.
His father owned a shoe factory, and his mother was a distant relation of Georg Cantor. When James Simons was a teenager, he worked a job in the basement stockroom of a garden supply store.
Career
Simons’ mathematical work has primarily focused on the geometry and topology of manifolds. His 1962 Berkeley PhD thesis, written under Bertram Kostant, gave new proof of Berger’s classification of the holonomy groups of Riemannian manifolds.
He subsequently began to work with Shing-Shen Chern on the theory of characteristic classes, eventually discovering the Chern-Simons secondary characteristic classes of 3-manifolds, which are related to the Yang-Mills functional on 4-manifolds, and have affected modern physics.
In 1964, Simons worked with the National Security Agency to break codes. Between 1964 and 1968, he was on the research staff of the Communications Research Division of the Institute for Defence Analyses.
He taught mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.
For more than two decades, Simons’ Renaissance Technologies’ hedge funds, which trade in markets worldwide, have employed mathematical models to analyse and execute trades, many automated. Renaissance uses computer-based models to predict price changes in financial instruments.
Medallion, the main fund closed to outside investors, has earned over $100bn in trading profits since its inception in 1988.
As of August 2022, Jim Simons’ net worth is estimated to be $22bn.
How Does Jim Simons Spend His Money?
Jim Simons spends some of his money on charity work. He’s a very active philanthropist and founded a self-titular non-profit, the Simons Foundation. The charitable organisation supports projects related to education, health and scientific research. Simons also founded Math for America, a non-profit organisation with the mission to significantly improve math education in public schools.
Highlights
Here are a few highlights from Jim Simons’ career:
Founder and CEO of Renaissance Technologies
Simons Foundation (1994)
Favourite Quotes from Jim Simons
“Patterns of price movement are not random. However, they’re close enough to random so that getting some excess, some edge out of it is not easy and not so obvious — thank God. God probably doesn’t care. Thank whoever.” – Jim Simons
“I wasn’t the fastest guy in the world. I wouldn’t have done well in an Olympiad or a math contest. But I like to ponder. And pondering things, just thinking about it and thinking about it, turns out to be a pretty good approach.’ – Jim Simons
“One can predict the course of a comet more easily than one can predict the course of Citigroup’s stock. The attractiveness, of course, is that you can make more money successfully predicting a stock than you can a comet.” – Jim Simons
“Great people. Great infrastructure. Open environment. Get everyone compensated roughly based on the overall performance. That made a lot of money. I disparage some for whom model-making as a part-time hobby.” – Jim Simons
“Let’s suppose you have a coin that is 70/30 heads. Well, if you get to bet heads, you will win seven times out of ten. Three times out of ten, you are going to lose, and that’s bad luck. So you need a measure of good luck to avoid a long run of tails when you have a 70/30 coin that’s headed.” – Jim Simons
Three Success Lessons From Jim Simons
Here are the top lessons to learn from the success Simons has achieved:
- Edge Is Important
In other words, data mining is ok. You do not need a hypothesis or explanation of why a certain investing/trading edge exists if it is statistically relevant or significant.
- Everyone Struggles With Discipline And Following Their System
Discipline is key, and the ability to consistently follow your system can be the difference between winning and losing. We all believe discipline becomes easier if you have more reliable edges or have grown your account quite a bit.
- Surround Yourself With A Great Team
Simmons has recruited great talents to his team. Surround yourself with experts in things you are not or inspire you to push past your limits.
Summary
Jim Simons is an American mathematician, hedge fund manager and philanthropist who is most famous being the CEO and founder of Renaissance Technologies.
He also holds a position as trustee for Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Institute for Advanced Study at Rockefeller University, Mathematical Research Institute in Berkeley.
He is a member of the board at MIT Corporation.
As of August 2022, Jim Simons’ net worth is estimated to be roughly $22bn.
