Hacker News Books

Collected takeaways from “The Man Who Solved the Market” - a (good) book about Jim Simons and RenTec that ring plausible to me at https://twoquants.com/decoding-rentec/.
A good Simons interview (by Numberphile) is https://youtu.be/QNznD9hMEh0.

FYI this article is an excerpt from a new book by the author:

> — Adapted from “The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution” by Wall Street Journal special writer Gregory Zuckerman, to be published on Nov. 5 by Portfolio

Say more.

Do you mean "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" which I read, or another book?

Renaissance Technologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies

Founded by Jim Simons, the "Father" of quantitative research. The firm is famous for their significant year-over-year returns and notorious for only hiring PhDs from mathematics/physics/computer science.

There is an interesting book on how Jim Simons created the company and built his team of academics from the ground up, "The Man Who Solved the Market"

If you're interested enough, read Gregory Zuckerman - "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" (2019)

The first half of the book goes over the academic history of quant trading.

Recently published book on this topic:

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman

Sure.

No. 1. "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" by Robert M. Sapolsky.

No. 2. "The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator" by Timothy C. Winegard.

No. 3. "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" by Gregory Zuckerman.

No. 4. "Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity" by Jamie Metzl.

No. 5. "Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do" by Jennifer L. Eberhardt.

No. 6. "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein.

No. 7. "The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War" by Ben Macintyre.

No. 8. "Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion" by Jia Tolentino.

No. 9. "Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know" by Malcolm Gladwell.

No. 10. "Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence," by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb.

In the book (“The Man Who Solved the Markets”), the author actually provides the Sharpe ratios for their flagship fund (“Medallion”). Medallion’s Sharpe Ratio has almost never been below 2.0, and has been as high as 7.0 (!!!) in some years.

I’ll link to the Wikipedia page below for the math, but these figures would highly suggest that their returns are much less likely the result of luck, and more likely the result of some edge/alpha generation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe_ratio

Agree, this can potentially take a long time and a lot of money to go to court. That's why I am considering the possibility that the Internet Archive is effectively trolling them by doing everything legally but talking about it in a way that upsets publishers.

BTW, thank you for the link to the attachment. Some books, like RE0000172597 The Magician's Nephew will likely be too old for statutory damages. Others, like TX0005757057 The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: a Leadership Fable were not registered timely and will likely be blocked from statutory damages due to that. But TX0008865827 The Man Who Solved the Market for example is registered timely, so that one would qualify for statutory damages, if they can prove that this book was willfully infringed.

But the last one - i.e. the only one in my 3 examples that could get statutory damages - looks like it was uploaded by a contributor and the preview page was only viewed a mere 621 times... So that could be a DMCA safe harbor defense, that IA simply didn't notice before that this unpopular contributor-uploaded book wasn't legal.

https://archive.org/details/manwhosolvedmark0000zuck/

BTW, it looks like the IA has now disabled the group pages for suing publishers, which might gently nudge viewers towards other books, potentially driving sales away to their competition.

"Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst"
https://www.amazon.com/Behave-Biology-Humans-Best-Worst/dp/0...

"The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator"
https://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Human-History-Deadliest-Pred...

"The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution"
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0...

"Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity"
https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Darwin-Genetic-Engineering-Hu...

"Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do"
https://www.amazon.com/Biased-Uncovering-Hidden-Prejudice-Sh...

"Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World"
https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized...

"The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War"
https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Traitor-Greatest-Espionage-Story/...

"Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion"
https://www.amazon.com/Trick-Mirror-Self-Delusion-Jia-Tolent...

"Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know"
https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Should-about-People...

"Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence"
https://www.amazon.com/Prediction-Machines-Economics-Artific...

"have no domain expertise in the underlying data. This kind of approach to finance has historically performed poorly"

I recently read 'The man who solved the market', about Jim Simons and Renaissance Capital. The way the book tells it, looking for patterns without seeking domain expertise (e.g. ignoring fundamental valuation of equities) is exactly what Renaissance did, and it worked out very well.

Simons doesn't do insider trading.

Arguably he paid long term capital gains on a basket that should have been short term capital gains.

But his system of short term, automated, stat arb / signal detection based trades are clearly not based on classified corporate data.

I suggest you read The Man Who Solved the Market for more info.

I hilariously overestimate the number of books I can get through when I make these lists, but my current list for 2020 is as follows:

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution

Book of Proof

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation

Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War (for a friend)

Master and Commander

Educated

Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark

Stretch goal: The Power Broker, as a warm-up for Caro's LBJ series

The Bible (perpetual, I don't get through it every year, but I get through much of it, often)

EDIT: I also hilariously underestimate the number of books I want to read. Here's one more I think is vital for my 2020:

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

You may be interested to know that Kelly's work was instrumental in a company called Axcom in the 60s. Elwyn Berlekamp, previously an assistant to Kelly at Bell Labs, implemented Kelly et al's work in early financial trading at Axcom, which was later turned into the Medallion Fund at Renaissance Technologies. Wikipedia [1] has some info on this, but I also highly recommend "The Man Who Solved The Market" (Zuckerman, 2019) for more history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Larry_Kelly_Jr.