The NUMBERS KING

The outsized impact of billionaire mathematician James Simons, who helped create “quantitative” investing using math and science

- KEITH GORDON

The man credited with being perhaps the most successful Wall Street investor and hedge fund manager in history—and perhaps the most intelligent billionaire in the world—has little interest in the kind of knowledge and information that is seemingly foundational to his peers in wealth management.

Simons, currently worth about $28 billion, is not solely focused on the stocks and other financial assets that Renaissance Technologies, the firm he founded in 1982, trades on a daily basis. He doesn’t delve into the detailed ins and outs of each trade, and in fact actively works to avoid trying to decipher the meaning and causes behind the buying and selling transactions of his firm—as he believes these attempts could contaminate the groundbreaking ‘quantitative investing’ system he crafted and that is the heart of the hedge fund.

This system has made him, his former colleagues, and the firm’s investors, annualized returns that are completely unheard of anywhere outside of Renaissance, making the firm the envy of other hedge funds and wealth management experts. In fact, within the walls of Renaissance Technologies, you’re unlikely to find many, if any, financial experts of the traditional sort. Instead, one is surrounded by mathematicians, physicists and other scientists, meaning that objectivity and scientific method replace the stereotypical economic theory and corporate analysis that largely define the investment industry and its leaders. In other words, the last thing Simons wanted in his firm was Wall Street experience, expertise and methods. All he wanted within the walls were things he could always place complete trust in: math and science.