š§The Investing G.O.A.T: a conversation with Greg Zuckerman, author of "The man Who Solved Wall Street"
$1 invested in the Medallion Fund from 1988-2021 would have grown to around $42,000 (net of fees) while $1 invested in the S&P 500 would have grown to $40.
Hi! Itās George from Investorama - I think book authors are my favourite type of podcast guests, and Greg is one of my favourite Journalist & Business book author!
You can watch it on YouTube, it includes clips from Billions and Pišš¼ or listen on all the podcast platforms.
Quotes
What made Jim Simons, the founder of Renaissance Technology, the G.O.A.T? Before starting an investment firm, he had made his mark on the world of mathematics. But other geniuses fail. They crash like LTCM and its Nobel-prized staff, or canāt sustain their track record. Many things contributed to making The Medallion Fund an exception, but here are a couple that stand out:
Jimās people and managerial skills:
It's about how to find talent, how to recruit talent, manage talent and that's kind of what he did. He brought in some of the best scientists and mathematicians from all over the world and got them to work together, which is a real feat in and of itself. And that makes it so fascinating as well, the people story
And the lack of Hubris:
We discussed it in this Twitter thread. Itās hard not to feel infallible when you are hailed as the greatest, but that to me feels like a key differentiator.
The conversation was also a discovery of the subtleties of the Quant world, something I hope to explore in a future post.
They're not high frequency, but they're also not traditional traders, it's called medium frequency. In other words, moments to months is their holding period. On average, I would argue a day or two is their holding period, but it could be shorter than that.
Thanks a lot to Greg Zuckerman for his time!
I canāt recommend the book enough, get it here.
Next: we have another G.O.A.T., in a different category. Iāll talk about Jack Bogle and the passive revolution with Eric Balchunas.
great coverage, thank you!