Jim Simons Quotes
108 Jim Simons Quotes
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[In November 2000.] Once in a while the phenomena we exploit are particularly present. We like a reasonable amount of volatility. In our business we want some action.
Jim Simons
[In November 2000.] Many of the anomalies we initially exploited are intact, though they have weakened some. What you need to do is pile them up. You need to build a system that is layered and layered. And with each new idea, you have to determine, Is this really new, or is this somehow embedded in what we've done already? So you use statistical tests to determine that, yes, a new discovery is really a new discovery. Okay, now how does it fit in? What's the right weighting to put in? And finally you make an improvement. Then you layer in another one. And another one.
Jim Simons
[In November 2000 on whether markets are more efficient than when he started?] Considerably more efficient. There was a time when we were trading Treasury bills and we were looking at the discount structure of the bills. We said, Something is crazy here. Far-out bills were trading at some huge discount, but the 12-month physical bill was not exhibiting any such discount. Something was wrong… So we just kept looking at it and saying, Why is this? The answer was that no one was picking up that inefficiency. So we bought up a whole bunch of Treasury bill futures, hedged the position in various ways, kept our fingers crossed, and sure enough, it came in. It could have gone the other way, I suppose, but not for very long, because the chickens had to come home to roost. But those kinds of opportunities don't exist now. The commodities markets used to trend pretty heavily - long-term trends - but those don't really exist anymore.
Jim Simons
[In November 2000 on the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) collapse which was a quantitative trading firm like Renaissance.] Everyone in the company read the book about LTCM. It makes you wary in a general sense. Our approach is very different. We don't start with models. We start with data. We don't have any preconceived notions. We look for things that can be replicated thousands of times. A trouble with convergence trading is that you don't have a time scale.
Jim Simons
[In November 2000 on how LTCM impacted him.] If anything, it was positive. We did very well during that period. Tumult is usually good for us. We don't have credit lines of any significance. We don't do a lot of leveraged-type financing. People were calling us from various banks asking us about our balance sheets. I had our guys calling our counterparties: ‘Tell me about your problems.’ Generally, those kinds of times - and also in '94 - when everyone is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, that's pretty good for us because they seem to evidence the patterns that we know how to take advantage of.
Jim Simons
[In November 2000.] For years people have asked me, ‘How much money can you manage?’ And my honest answer has been, ‘About twice as much as we now manage.’ And that's still my answer.
Jim Simons
[In November 2000.] Through high school, anything related to business seemed absurd to me.
Jim Simons
[In November 2000 on retirement.] To myself, I have said, ‘I'm 62; by the time I'm 65, I'd like to pass the baton.’
Jim Simons
[In December 2005.] I like big round numbers. The papers call me the $100 billion guy.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006.] I was always interested in math, even when I was a very little kid.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006.] We are not a teaching organization. We are a research organization. We hire people to make mathematical models of the markets in which we invest.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006.] We have very high standards and it works. Our business is wonderful as a result.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006.] Some of the work is really scientific. It’s looking at a lot of data and really looking for what underlies that data. In that sense, it is kind of like astronomy. You look at a lot of data from up in the sky, you bring it down, and it’s quite dirty and you have to clean it to get rid of outliers or one thing or another. Then you hope you can analyze that data in a way that makes sense of whatever hypothesis or set of hypotheses you may have about what you are looking at. That’s a big piece of what we do.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006 on how much of his success is due to pure luck.] Let’s suppose you have a coin that is 70/30 heads. Well, if you get to bet heads, you are going to win 7 times out of 10. Three times out 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 heads. At a certain point the luck evens out. Of course there’s luck in our business, but so far we’ve had a nice edge.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006.] It’s difficult to run a business and be so consumed with another passion.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006.] Everything is to some extent a compromise. Not everything can be perfect.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006.] It’s always nice to see your work picked up by someone else and carried on.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006.] I’ve never been on TV in any meaningful way. And I don’t really have a desire for that. There’s a wonderful quote in Animal Farm. The source of all wisdom in that book is Benjamin the donkey. He observes at one point that ‘God gave me a tail to keep off the flies. But I’d rather of had no tail and no flies.’ So, that’s kind of the way I feel about publicity.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006.] Teaching math and science ought to be a professional activity in which those professionals are well-paid and happy to do that as a career.
Jim Simons
[In September 2006.] As an employer, it’s more and more difficult for me, if that were my objective, to hire Americans or American-trained-and-born people into the company. We hire research guys in math and physics in reasonable numbers, and almost all of them are non-U.S.
Jim Simons
[In November 2006 on between 70-80% of his forecasting model being based on fundamentals and the balance on] Statistical phenomena we have discovered over the years.
Jim Simons
[In August 2007.] We have been caught in what appears to be a large wave of deleveraging on the part of quantitative long/short hedge funds.
Jim Simons
[In August 2007.] While we believe we have an excellent set of predictive signals, some of these are undoubtedly shared by a number of long/short hedge funds.
Jim Simons
[In January 2008 on what motivates him.] I’m ambitious and I like to do things well. I love to create something that really works. We have lots and lots and lots of strategies, and each new one gives me a lot of pleasure, to see something new that works.
Jim Simons
[In January 2008.] I've always intended to retire in the next two years. I've been saying that for a long time. The two years is a constant.
Jim Simons
[In November 2008.] We manage funds who’s trading is determined by mathematical formulas. We operate only in highly liquid publicly traded securities meaning we don’t trade in credit default swaps or collateralised debt obligations…
Jim Simons
[In November 2008.] Our trading models actually tend to be contrarian often buying stocks recently out of favour and selling those recently in favour.
Jim Simons
[In January 2009 on his futures fund returns losing 12% in 2008 and waiving the management fee in 2009.] Less than stellar.
Jim Simons
[In March 2009 on hiring Matthew H Scanlan from Barclays Global Investors to become president and CEO of Renaissance Institutional Management.] We are very excited to welcome a professional of Matthew's caliber to Renaissance. We look forward to leveraging Matthew's deep industry relationships and expertise as we continue to expand our business worldwide and increase our sophisticated institutional clientele.
Jim Simons
[In October 2009 at the age of 71 on retirement.] I have led the organization and its predecessor for thirty one years, and it is definitely time to pass the torch.
Jim Simons
[In June 2011 on liking to have a low media profile.] God gave me a tail to keep off the flies. But I'd rather have had no tail and no flies.
Jim Simons
[In June 2011.] Some firms say they have models; what they typically mean is the model advises the trader what to do, and if he likes the advice he'll take it and if he doesn't like the advice he won't take it.
Jim Simons
[In June 2011 on the advantage that scientists bring to the Hedge Fund industry.] They are less likely to accept an apparent winning strategy that might be a mere statistical fluke.
Jim Simons
[In August 2011 on giving $100 million together with Charles Simonyi to The Institute for Advanced Study.] We're admirers of the Institute and it fits into our mission very nicely.
Jim Simons
[In August 2011 on whether it was more fund to earn money or to give it away.] Both have been fun.
Jim Simons
[In September 2012.] By high school I knew that I was going to be a scientist of some sort. But I just assumed mathematics.
Jim Simons
[In September 2012.] I do have a capacity to just contemplate…
Jim Simons
[In September 2012.] I was an only child.
Jim Simons
[In September 2012.] I’ve always felt like something of an outsider, no matter what I was doing.
Jim Simons
[In September 2012.] We made more money per hour with fundamental trading, through certain periods… Gradually I saw that the systematic stuff could have legs. So we started with currencies, interest rate instruments, commodities in general but then started building systems. And that was the real breakthrough. If I’d stayed with fundamental trading I would have gotten colitis [An inflammation of the inner lining of the colon causing rectal bleeding, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and abdominal spasm.] again. It was a big strain. You never knew quite where you stand… It’s up one day and ‘I’m an genius’ and then the next it’s down and ‘I’m a dope’. The reality is that you’re not really a genius and you’re not really a dope and maybe you’re actually going to make money on this thing but the volatility was too high. Making models on the other hand if you could find some statistically significant factors was great.
Jim Simons
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