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What it argues
The Man Who Solved the Market is Gregory Zuckerman's account of Jim Simons, the mathematician who founded Renaissance Technologies and built the most successful investment firm in history. Simons was a world-class mathematician who cracked Soviet codes for the NSA and made foundational contributions to geometry before turning his attention to financial markets in his forties. The Medallion Fund, Renaissance's flagship, has returned roughly 66 percent annually before fees for more than three decades — a performance so far above any competitor that the finance world has largely stopped trying to explain it.
Zuckerman, a Wall Street Journal reporter, spent years conducting interviews for the book. The result is the most detailed account yet available of how Renaissance was built: the recruitment of mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists rather than finance professionals; the development of statistical models that could identify non-random patterns in price data; the fierce internal debates between the "fundamental" camp that wanted to incorporate traditional financial reasoning and the "systematic" camp that wanted pure mathematical signal; and the repeated crises that threatened to destroy the firm.
What it gets right
- 1.
Renaissance Technologies' Medallion Fund has produced roughly 66 percent annual returns before fees for over thirty years — the greatest track record in the history of investment management.
- 2.
Simons built Renaissance by hiring mathematicians and scientists rather than finance professionals. The firm explicitly did not want people who thought like economists.
- 3.
The systematic approach treats financial markets as data problems: find persistent statistical patterns in price data, trade them mechanically, and never deviate based on intuition or explanation.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Gregory Zuckerman is a special writer at The Wall Street Journal and the author of four books on business and finance, including The Greatest Trade Ever, about John Paulson's bet against subprime mortgages. He has been awarded the Gerald Loeb Award multiple times for distinguished business and financial journalism. Zuckerman spent several years reporting The Man Who Solved the Market, interviewing dozens of current and former Renaissance employees and associates of Jim Simons. He is based in New York.
