James Simons, quantum investing pioneer and philanthropist, has passed away at the age of 86
Billionaire investor James Simons, a Cold War-era mathematician and code breaker who founded one of the best-known and most profitable hedge funds, Renaissance Technologies, has died at 86, his foundation said Friday.
The Simons Foundation did not give a cause of death.
Sixty years ago, Simons, who preferred to be called Jim, switched from teaching math and working in U.S. intelligence to investing. His pioneering use of computer signals to make trading decisions earned him the nickname "the king of quants".
His fortune is estimated by Forbes at $31 billion dollars, Simons also became a renowned philanthropist, giving billions of dollars during his lifetime to support medical and scientific research, teaching, and Democratic candidates.
"Churchill used to say that 'a great man and a good man are rarely the same person.' Jim Simons was the exception that confirms Churchill's rule", says Clifford Asness, manager and founder of AQR Capital Management, referring to Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime prime minister.
As a mathematician, Simons is used to working with large data sets and finding patterns to guide buying and selling.
He founded Renaissance in 1978 in East Setauket, N.Y., 70 miles east of Wall Street. He quickly developed a new way of investing, laying the foundation for quantitative trading, which dozens of companies have adopted in recent years.
"We hire physicists, mathematicians, astronomers and computer scientists, and they generally don't know anything about finance", Simons said at a conference in New York in 2007. "We haven't hired from Wall Street at all", he added.
On Wall Street, Simons was revered and also a bit feared.
Renaissance, whose Medallion Fund delivered average annualized returns of more than 60% for three decades, became one of the world's most successful hedge funds under Simons. He stepped down as CEO in 2010 and will step down as chairman in 2021.
Simons was secretive about how his firm made money. He was described as someone who viewed markets as a code to be cracked, Wall Street Journal author Gregory Zuckerman wrote in his 2019 book "The Man Who Solved the Market".
Medallion's trading system is based on buying and selling that work in concert to produce high profits at low risk across all asset classes, and in such a way that the patterns usually remain hidden to other traders.
In 1994, Simons and his wife Marilyn established the Simons Foundation, which supports scientists and organizations around the world in pushing the boundaries of research in mathematics and the basic sciences.
He is survived by his wife, three children, five grandchildren and a great-grandchild. "I did a lot of math. I made a lot of money and gave almost all of it away", Simons said at the 2022 event honoring Abel Prize winners recognized for their mathematical achievements.