The American who founded the most successful quantitative hedge fund of all time died on Friday at the age of 86 in New York. This is stated in a press release published by Simon’s own foundation, first reported by CNBC.
Simons was a pioneer in mathematical models and algorithms for making investment decisions. Through his company Renaissance Technologies, Simons achieved an unprecedented success record, surpassing investment legends such as Warren Buffett and George Soros.
The company’s flagship, the Medallion Fund, achieved an annual return of 66 percent in a period from 2018, according to Gregory Zuckerman’s “The Man Who Solved the Market” – a book that deals with Simon’s life and work.
During the Vietnam War, Simons worked as a codebreaker for American intelligence, where he masterfully managed to crack Soviet codes.
Simons defended his doctorate in mathematics from the University of California, already at the age of 23. The “quantum guru”, as he was also referred to, started Renaissance in 1978 when he left academia in favor of a career in finance.
Simon’s investment strategy was to rely solely on an automated trading system to take advantage of market inefficiencies and trading patterns. In the book “The Man Who Solved the Market”, the book author explains that Simon’s winning recipe was to exclude all emotion from the equation, and to focus only on hard facts.
His Medallion Fund earned more than 100 billion between 1998 and 2018, with an annualized return of 39 percent after fees.
Simons’ net worth is estimated to have been 31.4 billion dollars, or 340 billion kroner, when he died, according to Forbes.
Simons and his wife established the Simons Foundation back in 1994 and have since given billions of dollars to philanthropic causes, including for research purposes in mathematics and natural sciences.