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I'm interested: with Jim Simons, is it some acumen you believe in, some method he employs, or some connections/stature that leads good deals to his door? For i
by firebones 9y ago
I'm interested: with Jim Simons, is it some acumen you believe in, some method he employs, or some connections/stature that leads good deals to his door?
For instance, with Buffett, it seemed his stature, historical perspective, and means allowed him to invest $5B in Goldman Sachs at the near height of panic, under terms that very few were able to get.
(Caveat: I don't know anything about Simons, but I'm very curious about the basis for your claim/offer, knowing that in the HN crowd, you have a lot of industry experience.)
- valuearb 9y agoBuffett will tell you value investing isn't just being good at valuing investments, its practicing dozens of little techniques to eliminate outside influences from your thought process, so you can make rational decisions in every market. Some smart investor fail because they can't control their own psychology. Read the Mr Market parable for an overview.
- dsacco 9y agoI'm aware of what you're saying about Buffett (he is essentially an excellent and influential business magnate, not just an excellent investor), but it doesn't apply to Simons. He's a mathematician (Chern-Simons theorem), and his investing methodology is utterly different from Buffett's. Simons' firm, Renaissance Technologies, doesn't do value investing. They were one of the first hedge funds to do quantitative financial modeling. I suspect a lot of what they do is market making instead of purely directional trading, but it's hard to know since the fund is incredibly secretive. Simons' business connections or acumen in the traditional sense have nothing to do with the fund's success; it's entirely about the strategy they employ.
- firebones 9y agoThanks for the clarification and explanation.