RIP: Jim Simons, pioneering quant investor

In the late 1970s, Simons abandoned a promising career as an academic mathematician to trade currencies, and built Renaissance Technologies into one of the most profitable investment shops of all time. Renaissance’s flagship Medallion fund — open only to Renaissance employees — averaged annual returns, after fees, of nearly 40% from 1988 to 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Gregory Zuckerman, who wrote a book about Simons entitled “The Man Who Solved the Market.”