YouSaid · the spoken record

Gregory Zuckerman

lines on the record: 124
first: 2019-10-30
most recent: 2019-10-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I did, there were a few times where I'm working all night in my basement and I hear some sound upstairs and I'm like, oh, my kids left the TV on again. And then I go up to turn it off and there's no TV on. And then I realize that those sounds are the birds getting up in the morning.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The challenges we're getting people to talk, and even when they started talking, understanding what they were telling me, and I'm not a math guy, I had to understand this is a different language quant to some extent. And even at that point, trying to make it into a narrative. As you suggest, I try to appeal. I want to try to appeal to everyone. The Quanti type people, mathematicians, scientists, but also just the average nonfiction readers.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and is he fooling himself a little bit like Bob Mercer with his pseudo signs outside of the office? And that's one thing that's kind of jumped out in the book that these guys are like you and I in so many ways. They've got their foibles and they get emotional. They get fights with their wives and screaming matches with their colleagues. And Jim Simons, yes, has convinced himself that he won't be impacted by smoking it into his credit. It hasn't impacted him. So, you know, once again, he may be right.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He said to them, it's not clear if this was tongue in cheek. It probably wasn't, but he researched his genes. And according to his work, his research, he is one of these unique people that can actually withstand all the chain smoking that he does. He inflicts on his body.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and he's also almost 82. So it hasn't really impacted his life. So he's in this meeting and Simon's looks around. No ashtrays. No ashtrays. He's looking for an ashtray, but he needs to ash somewhere. And he sees this big fancy cake that had been wheeled in to end the dinner, the lunch, and everyone's going to have a piece of it. So he reaches over and he sticks his cigarette deep into that cake. And he's Jim Simon. He just gets up and waves goodbye. And that thing is sizzling as he exits the room. And everyone just look at each other and the Renaissance salesmen are just dumbfounded and apoplectic. Because they've lost their commission. They're sure. This is the Robert Johnson Foundation dedicated to public health. So obviously this guy just Ash in a sizzling vanilla cake right in front of them. They're not going to write it.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That story. Sure. That's that Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. They're dedicated to public health. And they came by Renaissance's Long Island offices to talk about investing in reef. That's one of their outside funds. This was early on when they were raising money for it. They were impressed. They were having a nice lunch. People around the table. Simon's comes in to finish off the sale. Everyone's all excited. The salesman at Renaissance can see their commissions. They can imagine how much they're going to be making from this big investment. And Simons, as you suggest, is chain smoking. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He smoked with me.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my god, there's no comparison. Quite honestly, he always had one foot in the world of academia and one foot out. He was always doing businesses. And they were quite interesting. I read about him in the book. He pursued trading and pursued business, not full-time and never really worked out completely, but he always had these outside interests. So yeah, he always really was focused on getting rich. And he wanted to change the world with that money, but he also just plain like getting wealthy. So here they were with staring at the possibility of seeing their return slow down. And he said, I'd rather kick out my investors than risk the possibility of our returns of dropping.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he basically was just a little cold. You know, Jib Simons is a fascinating guy. He's a scientist. He cares about society. He's a huge philanthropist, does all kinds of really interesting things in education and science. He also really, really loves money. And he.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These remarkable models that allow them to know how much they can make in certain size, how much they impact the market, they're pretty sophisticated. And they realize that at 10 billion or more, they're going to really not be able to have those kind of returns. Now, you and I would probably say, fine, instead of being up 66% a year, we'll be up 35% a year and we'll grow this AUM here and make the money. But no, they wanted this hedge fund to be just for them and to have these outstanding, remarkable returns. So they proceeded to kick, as you suggest, kick their LPs out, kick their investors out, and they were not happy. They weren't thrilled. Some of them said, you know, I stuck with you, Jim, through the difficult times. And here you are kicking me out. And he kicked out his friends too. He kicked everybody out.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Went to speak to Donald Sussman. So you can't blame him too much. But yeah, there were a number of pretty well respected investors I talk about in the book who had an opportunity to invest in Medallion and passed on it.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Donald Sussman is the key one. Donald Sussman is one of the most respected investors on Wall Street. He backed D.E. Shaw. He's backed a lot of famous investors over the years. And he's a really well-impressive guy in his own, right? A great track record. And Simons came to him hat in hand in 1990 saying, I think I've got it. I think I figured it out. I'd like some backing from you. And it wasn't that susman disagreed. It wasn't that he was necessarily skeptical of Jim Simons, but he had already invested in Dee Shaw. Didn't want to invest in a competitor. And there wasn't much of a track record at that point. In 1988, is really when they decided to go all in on quantitative investing using big data, using algorithms as opposed to using some of the instinctive intuition type trading. And so there wasn't much of a track record in 1990 when Jim Simons.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and the thing to remember about Renaissance is they only get right barely more than 50% of the time. And they're aware of that. So on the one hand, their sharper ratio is crazy great, which allows them to leverage up and borrow this money. And it's pretty impressive in its own, right? But it also as a reminder, they realize they're not hitting home runs every single day. It's like a casino. They're making small amounts all the time.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, you got to remember they're long and short all the time. Everything is hedged. They're long, again, about 4,000 and short about 4,000 on average equities. So them leveraging up is not like you and I going along, Microsoft and leveraging up. It's different.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends. It ranges if they're excited about the market and opportunities. If they're not, but they could do 10 times or even more. It depends on what the opportunities are.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, they get scared like you and I, and even though internally they're people that say don't ever mess with the models, people like Simons, he doesn't run things day to day. But in terms of crisis I describe in the book, there was panic there like any other kind of trading firm. And in those kind of times, he overruled his colleagues and he said, yes, we'll probably make money here if we stick with our models, but I'm worried about surviving. And if you think about it, they also borrow a lot of money. So they've got lenders, banks, and others. And those banks get nervous if they pull back on them. That'll affect things. So Simons, that's part of Simon's genius. That again, he can manage really well too and deal with investors and borrowers as well.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Generally speaking, exactly in times of crisis, the firm will pull back. When they're not sure, when they're worried, and that's part of that humility. So they don't have this arrogance that, oh, our models will survive. The LTCM kind of thing. They're not.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is unusual and a little bit surprising. They generally speaking never override their models, and they take pride in it.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly right. So people do get them confused with kind of the flashboys. But yeah, generally speaking, about two days or so is a holding period”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they're not flashboys. They're medium frequency is what people call it in the industry. They frankly, their technology is good, but it's not great. You would think they would have the best of everything. And they sort of poke fun at each other internally. They've got good technology, but it's not cutting edge necessarily. They're not co-locating and all that kind of stuff.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good way to look at it. Generally speaking, on average, it's about a two day holding period, but they'll get two weeks too. They'll do fast trading. They'll do what looks like high frequency, but really isn't in that they're doing that usually to break up their trade. So they'll do a rapid fire within seconds.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so almost all of what they do is based on predictive models that incorporate historic returns, historic moves in the market. And they could be recent returns. They could be from the late 1800s. They don't usually use those, but they're there if they want them to. So they've gotten the better data and it's cleaner than other people. And they were cleaning it way before anybody else and they cared about this stuff more. But right, the genius of Renaissance is that we as investors, our behavior is somewhat repetitive and maybe and it rhymes. Now it's not clear going forward will that'll continue. So things have changed. We've got, as we all know, passive investing is dominating the market. Active investors don't play the same role, factor investing, et cetera. So will medallions models, will Renaissance models continue to trounce the market, even internally, they're not 100% sure.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That and they know when they'll move the prices and when they won't, so they can play with their signals and try to make them and try to make sure their activity isn't picked up on by rivals. They have some signals that they are internally are proud of and think people aren't aware of. And there's sophisticated stuff. These are mathematical relationships. I mean, it's one thing that one thing that I think everyone should realize that it's not like they've got some secret sauce about, you know, when IBM goes up every day. These are mathematical relationships between groups of stocks and the relationship to indexes, relationships to each other, relationships to factors. It's complex, complicated stuff, but they have certain unique insights that others don't. It's like seeing the world just a little bit with a better glasses when everybody else isn't wearing them. They can see things that others can.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a lot of things. They do better. Renaissance does a lot of things better than everybody else. There's a certain urgency within the firm that you feel when you're there and you talk to people that you don't really necessarily get elsewhere. There's a collaboration that you see internally. One model that other firms don't share. There's a sense of humility. They don't take too much risk. They pull back risk during crises when things are even turned when people are saying hey, let's put on more risk. They generally speaking pull back. They use leverage. They use heavy leverage. People don't really focus on how much leverage, but they are a 10 billion fund that can get over $100 billion when they see the opportunities. I could go on and on. They really have the best trading ability to see what their impact on the overall market is.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's remarkable, man. They went from managing. Medallion was about 800 million dollars or so at the time and equities was like $30, $40 million, $10 billion of the greatest hedge fund in mankind modern financial history. So there was a small, tiny error that he picked up on and the rest is history.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but you know, it also is a reminder that even the Giants make dumb errors too. Right. And yes, so Magerman picked up on the mistake internally. He finally got some respect because he brought her over to Bob Mercer. And it was Mercer's math. He kind of got it wrong. And he kind of to his credit, Bob Mercer, there's some appealing aspects to his personality as well. He said he owned up to it and said, yeah, I screwed this up. Let's fix it. And they're off to the races.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but you think of Renaissance and Medallion and Jim Simons, and who are they? They are like you and I, or at least not in like me.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly right. So, this guy, David Magerman, was, had just been hired a few years earlier from IBM. Early on, he got some, had some accomplishments and got some respect internally. But then he blew it. He made a series of dumb errors, mistakes. Basically, he was doing things he shouldn't have been doing. At one point, he almost pulled the plug on the whole system. It was embarrassing. He was embarrassed. He was close to getting really getting pushed out of there. And he's the one who said, you know what? Maybe I can look at this system and find what the bug is. And as you suggest, it was static. It wasn't updating. The system wasn't updating, incorporating the newest S&P 500 prices, which sort of, you know, is a surprise in itself. You think of these top giants in science. They should have made this kind of dumb mistake. Thousands of lines.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it was very close. And one has to also recall or remember or note that Jim Simons had remarkable patience. So he has this optimism that most people don't share. He encourages his people. People were giving up internally about trying to figure out equities. People were saying it's a waste of our resources. Stop distracting us. And Simons kept encouraging his team. And yet, as you know, even he was at his wit's end and ready to move on and gave his employees, his staff, Bob Mercer and Peter Brown, a matter of months to figure it out because they had tried and failed over and over again. And there was a quirk. There was an”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really not easy, and you think about these really quirky personalities, which really jumps out at you, I think, when you read the book, how many unusual, odd, headstrong, stubborn top scientists they've hired. And they're pretty wealthy. They could leave and go somewhere else. And he was able to create this incentive for them to stay and work together, not just stay there, but they work together. And like you suggest, you can see that pattern early on in his career. He was great as a department chair at keeping people happy, all the different personalities, same kind of thing, where you can't really force someone who's a professor to do them to do. You've got to create incentives. And that's exactly what he's done at Renaissance. And I think in some ways you can learn management skills from him as much as you can learn how to create algorithms.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's fair. So listen, Jim Simons has his faults. He's not a perfect individual, but he's quite impressive in his ability to both do the math and the science and when he wants to or needs to, he can do the algorithms. But more importantly, his ability to manage talents. And someone internally said to me, Greg, it's not his genius, but it's his ability to manage genius.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a lot of sauces that are secret and impressive. The collaborative, they're much more collaborative than most firms. They don't try to predict where the market is going. It's all relationships. It's groups of stocks versus groups of stocks, 4,000 or so along, 4,000 or so short. They've many. But among the most impressive things about that firm is they still can recruit almost anyone from any area. And they get superstars from academia and other places.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So by then, they had started a few outside hedge funds for institutions and others. They still had the medallion, which is only for internal employees. But right, by the time the election, they had outside investors. And many were unhappy. But that said, the returns were still really good. So it wasn't clear to me that how many were really going to pull out over Bob Mercer's politics. The bigger issue is that they were worried about their ability to keep attracting talent. And that's what they worry about. That is their biggest concern because they're not competing necessarily with PDT and 2Sigma only. They're also competing with Google and Facebook. These are scientists who could go work somewhere else and they were concerned about their ability to keep recruiting them. And at some point, Jim Simons said, By, we've got to talk. And I talk about that scene. I described that scene in the book. And it was difficult for both of them, Bob Mercer was effectively told to step down. And Jim Son.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, and many were torn internally, but it got to the point where morale was being affected. And they were worried about their ability to recruit. And that's the lifeblood of that place.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And broader society, potentially. And even Jim Simons was torn. So Jim Simons was the largest, one of the largest funders of Hillary Clinton. And his top employee, Bob Mercer, was the top funder for Donald Trump. So he was in a bind, Jim Simons. He couldn't fire his employee for his political beliefs, and he also liked him. He likes him on an individual basis.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Bob Mercer was at Renaissance throughout the campaign, through the election, and many internally were unhappy about that. But not everyone. Others thought he was a good leader. He formed a really impressive partnership with a guy named Peter Brown. Peter Brown is tempestuous. He's always got crazy, interesting ideas, some work, some don't. And Bob Mercer was the calm one. It was the yin and the yang. And they worked really well together. So internally, some people were like, what do we do here? Our CEO is still doing a great job. We're still making 60% a year in the market.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the argument. There you go. Again, not based on science. There's like some stray, he picked up on some stray. He sees on a stray scientific paper that was since discredited, which is, again, goes back to the irony that a guy who demands science when it comes to his day-to-day work, when it comes to his personal outside interests, he's less demanding.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“History in Yes. Versus a climate denialist. He believes that nuclear war may not be as harmful as we all believe. Unless you get penned.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Rebecca Mercer, like her father, is very conservative, Rebecca homeschools her children and believes in small government, low taxation, hates the Clintons, like Bob Mercer. But they also believe in data. And they also believe in the fact that they got really frustrated with mainstream Republicans. And they didn't think.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Trump listens to him to his credit and the rest of this history. So were it not for Rebecca Mercer and Bob Mercer, it's not clear Trump would have won”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First, they were crews. They were backing Ted Cruz and they, after a lunch between Ivanka and Rebecca Mercer, the Mercers switched gears, and also Cruz lost. He got out of the race. Then they switched gears. They became one of the top funders. I think they eventually became the top funder for Trump. So Rebecca Mercer runs up to Donald Trump at an event, says you're going to lose unless you drastically change things. And Trump kind of acknowledges like, yeah, what do I do? And Rebecca said, you've got to work with this guy, Steve Bannon. So Steve Trump's like, all right, I'll meet with him. So Steve Bannon goes out to the country club in New Jersey to talk to Trump, has to wait through Trump, goes through a couple hot dogs, ice cream Sunday, plays golf and Bannon's waiting and waiting. And finally, he gets an audience with Trump and he lays out strategically what he should be doing.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So, what happened was Bob Mercer's daughter, Rebecca Mercer, who kind of runs the political side of things and the family, she ran up to Trump at an event, a campaign event, and said, you better turn things around or else we're done. And Trump have been fine.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Trump campaign, and one can argue, and people have said that there may not have been a Trump presidency were it not for this guy, Bob Mercer, which made everyone internally uncomfortable”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. He demands proof when it comes to work and not so much outside of work. I mean, for a long time, he was treated as a curiosity within Renaissance. He would get lunch room, get under people's skin by talking, by sharing some of these conspiracy theories about Hillary or somebody else. And people weren't sure internally whether he really believed in it or not. He was the boss. They didn't want to challenge him too much. So for a while, they didn't take him seriously. They didn't think they needed to. And then lo and behold, as he, as the firm grew and he became a multi-billionaire, they realized that he was funding all kinds of causes that many people, if not most people at Renaissance, are really uncomfortable with, unhappy about. And they were stuck. They didn't know what to do. We're talking about everything from Brexit. He was helpful in terms of Brexit. Breitbart, he was funding Breitbart. And then he got behind the Trump campaign. He's the one who put Kelly Ann Conway and Steve Bannon in.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so Bob Marcur is a scientist who demanded internally that everyone stick to the scientific method and it's a data-driven firm. Everything has to be proved. There's no intuition exactly. And yet, as you suggest, when it comes to his personal beliefs.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Barry, that speaks to the paradox of the whole Jim Simons and Renaissance story, the very people who figured out the market, who conquered the market are pretty much the last people you would have expected because they were people that didn't know anything about the market. It's about didn't know anything about investing. Not only that, some of them aren't even capitalists internally when you talk to them.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The technologies was much better. They combined all kinds of different signals and factors into one system, which is one of their great advantages too, as opposed to different models, a lot of different quant firms have multiple different models. They have one system, and it's hard to pull that off. And that's what it took somebody like Bob Mersher to figure that out.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's what Simon's want. And you want to leave a mark on the world broadly and make a lot of money, use that money. And you couldn't do that unless they could crack equities. Because as we know, equities, you can manage much more money in the equity world relative to the other types of worlds, fixed income and commodities, et cetera. So they were frustrated. And there were a bunch of turning points within the Renaissance story. They almost fell apart a number of times, more than I would have expected. That's another kind of surprise from my research. There were several times where it was touch and go, whether they would keep going or not. So 1994, there were people within the firm and said, give it up, Jim. Stop trying to figure out equities. And they almost gave it up. And then this guy, as you suggest, Bob Mercer came along and Peter Brown to speech recognition experts from IBM. And they built and improved equities trading system, much improved the engineer.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly right. So around 1994, Renaissance was an okay middling kind of firm respected by those who knew it. Most people had no clue who they were.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you don't even have to pay people there. I mean, they do pay nicely, but just the ability to invest in Medallion retains top talent. It also makes them so wealthy, quite frankly, that a lot of these guys, when they leave and the few women that work in there, when they leave, they're not going to another Wall Street firm. They make so much money. They're doing philanthropy. They're going back to academia. Other interesting things. So it's a great way to retain talent. And it's also a great way to make sure people aren't going to quit and start rivals.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Seven, eight billion a year. So, you know, you got to give Jim Simons all kinds of credit and his colleagues, and they are the greatest modern day investors in history. But you also want to note that they didn't, they weren't able to grow it. They knew they couldn't grow it beyond what it is right now. We're talking about the medallion fund, $10 billion. So it's not like they kept growing it to $50, $100 billion. They knew they could not get those kinds of returns.”
2019-10-30 · Masters in Business · Gregory Zuckerman on the Quant Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source