James Simons Flashcards
Where is Renaissance Technologies headquartered?
East Setauket, New York
Who are James Simons’ co-CEOs?
Robert Mercer
Peter Brown
What is Renaissance most famous product?
the Medalion Fund
Who is James Simons?
An award winning mathematician and former Cold War code breaker.
What do you call hedge funds that use quantitative trading?
Quant hedge funds
When was the medallion fund established?
1988
What is the medallion fund based on?
Leonard Baum’s mathematical models and pioneering algebraist James Ax’s improvements to those models
What is the medallion fund’s record?
35 percent annualized return over a 20 year span, with a 71% annual return from 1994 to 2014.
When did Simons retire from Renaissance?
2009
Where did Robert Mercer and Peter Brown come from?
IBM
Where was James Simons the chair of the department of mathematics?
Stony Brook University
What prize did Simons win in 1976?
Oswald Veblen Prize of the American Mathematical Society
What is the Oswald Veben Prize?
The highest honor in geometry
Which of Simons’s projects helps define esoteric aspects of modern physics including how invisible fields like that of gravity interact with matter to produce everything from superstrings to black holes?
Chern-Simons theory
What scale is Renaissance’s database?
Petabyte
Renassance uses computer-based models to predict___
price changes in easily traded financial instrumetns.
The models that renaissance uses are based on analyzing as much data as can be gathered, ___
then looking for non-random movements to make predictions.
What is Renaissance’s latest fund?
the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund (RIEF)
It is a widely held belief within Renaissance that the ______ is to blame for poor investor returns.
herdlike mentality among business school graduates
The firm is famous for these three things involving employees
non-existent personnel turnover
stringent intellectual property obligations including iron clad non-compete and non-disclosure agreements
ability to recruit and retain top scientific talent
What was Simons’ first business venture called and when did he start it?
Monometrics
1978
Who was James Simons first recruit?
Leonard Baum, a cryptoanalyst from IDA who was the co-author of the Baum-Welch algorithm
Where did Simons find pioneering algebraist James Ax?
Cornell University
What was the medallion fund’s predecessor called?
Axcom Ltd., run by James Ax
