YouSaid · the spoken record

Jim Simons

lines on the record: 35
first: 2020-01-26
most recent: 2020-01-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I could see again. I said it before it's very thrilling. Let's go to the back page real quick. You got Ed Thorpe, who has become somebody that I definitely don't idolize him. That's not the right word, but something I look up to. And when I read the story at Dorp's Life, Man of All Markets, I look at his life as something that I want to aspire to. The fact that he was so successful in so many different domains that are important and he understood when enough was enough. I think I've been telling friends. I've been buying that book for a lot of people that in my opinion he mastered life my opinion of what a mastered life looks like. Everybody probably has a different opinion, right? So he says, talks about this book. He says Zuckerman Vivi tells the story of how Jim Simmons and his team of scientists develop the most successful quantitative trading operation history. It was immensely enjoyable. One of my favorite writers, Michael Lewis, who says the definitive account of a strange and wonderful subplot of the financial crisis, it's very well reviewed.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be persistent. He definitely did that. Don't give up easily. And then this I just love because this is the way I feel about whenever I see like a well run business or a well thought idea, there is a beautiful element to it for me. It is beautiful. Good writing, great books. There's just all kinds of things in life that are like that, staring at the ocean, looking at mountains, whatever. He says, and I think it's good life advice. Be guided by beauty. It can be the way a company runs or the way an experiment comes out. There's a sense of beauty when something is working well. I think that's a lovely way to end this story. If you want the full story, I definitely read the book. Like I said, at Stop At Part 2, maybe you might be more interested in that stuff and then read about it if you want to.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With the school's audience. Work with the smartest people you can, hopefully smarter than you. Be persistent. Don't give up easily. So he did that. He worked with smart people. A lot of those people, especially in a specific domain, he says they're a lot smarter than me.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Capable of digesting uncertain jumbles of information and generating reliable guesses And to further explain that point, Simmons does a great job of taking extremely complex things. And then he's a teacher at heart. That's what he did for not most of his life, maybe two decades of his life. So he explains that paragraph now, he's going to translate that for us, right? And so he's going to summarize that point here. Simmons summed up the approach in a 2014 speech. It's a very big exercise in machine learning. If you want to look at it that way, studying the past, understanding what happens and how it might impinge non-randomly on the future.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's different from being worth $200 million. You are actually making that is real cash coming back to you $200 million. No Siemens responded. We can do better. Emperors want empires, griped one colleague. What Jim wants to do is matter. He wanted a life that meant something. If he was going to do a fund, he wanted to be the best.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Instinctly understand that that's not true. Like one of the reasons I started companies when I was so young is because first of all I had to. I had to make money and I didn't think making $10 an hour or whatever it was 15, 20 years ago, whenever that was I thought I was worth more than that and I was willing to bet on myself to prove that. So I think that's not a unique thought by any means. It's why you start a company. You're like, I can capture way more. First of all, I can provide more value and I can capture more of it than just going to get a job. So he says they were convinced there's no way that markets could be suggesting that there were no predictable ways to beat the market returns and that financial decision making of individuals were largely rational. Simmons and his colleague sensed that professors were wrong. They believed investors are prone to cognitive biases, the kinds that lead to panics, bubbles, booms, and busts. So it also talks about in here it's like, well, they came to that realization early. And then after the fact, you had people like Danny.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, here's the point. Remember when I said Jim was his heart and his mind were messing with him because this is what I want, but I don't understand why. I understand why. Eventually Jim gets over that. And then he has this great metaphor for how Jim thought about the system that they were developing. He says, I don't know why planets orbit the Sun, Simmons said, suggesting one to spend too much time figuring out why the market patterns existed. That doesn't mean I can't predict them. So, again, I think that just helps. The book can get, it's a great story, but it can be sometimes confusing what the hell is going on. So these metaphors really help me understand, and that's why I'm sharing it with you. Let's see.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jim is worried about overall macroeconomic environment. So he's like, hey, maybe we should buy some gold. I have like essentially he's like, I have an intuition that we should do something. But Jim, you just said that you didn't want to rely on intuition that when you relied on intuition in the past and you succeeded and then it never be failed, you got sick. You wanted to throw up all this other stuff. So what are you doing? So he's calling up his trading partner, Burger Camp. He's like, buy gold. And Burger Camp's like, no. We're going to know, Jim. We're not doing that. We're going to let the system run the hang up a bit later. He calls again, did you see gold? It went up. And Berkeley Camp's like, what are you doing? He says, says Burke Camp was baffled. It was Simmons who had pushed to develop a computerized trading system free of human involvement. And it was Simmons who wanted to rely on the scientific method testing overlooked anomalies rather than using crew charts or gut instinct. Yet the rest of the team had worked diligently to remove humans from the trading loop.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is this what he wanted to do, but he was still unsure. Like, we love playing tricks on ourselves. Our mind is undefeated. And just understand that even like, think about how strange this is. He might have been working, let's say, what, 20 years where we are in, like, he had this idea for 20 years. He starts finally getting to the point where he sees just on the horizon, it's right there. And what happens? Back to his old friend's self-doubt. mind playing tricks on him. I'm like, I don't, just it doesn't feel. It doesn't feel right. There's just something that happens that we have to understand. This is something that happens rather. And we just have to understand that it's going to happen to us. It's going to happen to other people. And like we just have to, when that happens, I love this idea because it's almost like to me what is happening in the Simmons here is almost like a fear of the unknown, you know, because we love to tell ourselves stories. We want to know the why.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I want to read this section to you, and then I'll take you the note I left myself. He says his method wasn't based on a model Simmons and his colleagues could reduce to a set of standard equations, and that bothered him. These results came from running a program for hours, letting computers dig through patterns and generate trades. This sounds exactly what he wanted to do anyways. To Simmons, though, it just didn't feel right. I can't get comfortable with what the system is telling me. I don't understand why. It's a black box, he said with frustration. Karma and his colleague agreed with Simmons' assessment, but he persisted. Just follow the data, Jim. It's not me, it's the data. It works, Jim, and it makes rational sense. Humans can't forecast prices. Let the computers do it, they urged. It was exactly what Simmons originally had hoped to do, yet Simmons still wasn't convicted of this radical approach. When I read that section, it's just like the insight.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to take the good ideas and avoid the bad and keep pushing forward. I think that's good advice for life. But before he's able to do that, we got to go back to wrestling with self doubt. Our old friend is here. Good old self-doubt. The losses in 1984 trading tobacco left deep scars on Simmons. The fund was losing millions of dollars daily. Simmons contemplated giving up, trading to focus on his expanding technology businesses. Simmons himself was racked with self-doubt. He had to find a different approach. Okay, so eventually he starts working with other colleagues where They build together, they build something that's very close to what Simmons envisioned when he was 28 years old, right? This automated...”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The important part to remember here, too, is like he has to go through these tough times to arrive at the innovation that actually gives him these crazy outsides results. He could not have had the important part here. He could not have the success he had without first going through the failure. That applies to everybody. All right, so he's going to emerge from the funk and he comes up with a new goal. In the following days, Simmons emerged from his funk, more determined than ever to build a high-tech trading system guided by algorithms rather than human judgment. He shared a new goal, building a sophisticated trading system fully dependent on preset algorithms that might even be automated. I didn't want to have to worry about the market every minute. I want models that will make money why I sleep, he said. The technology for a fully automated system wasn't there yet. He suspected he'd need reams of historic data so his computers could search for persistent and repeating price patterns across a large swap.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they start trading bonds as well. They're doing all this other stuff. The important part is that it's going to blow up in their face. It says Simmons' shift to bond trading had gone awry. Clients kept calling, but now they were asking why they were losing so much money rather than extending congratulations. Simmons seemed to take the downturn hard, growing more anxious as the losses increased. I'm going to explain more about his state of mind here. The important part to remember about this section is we all go through this. Don't quit. Simmons seemed to take the downturn hard, growing more anxious as the losses increased. Sometimes I look at this and I feel like I'm just some guy who doesn't really know what he's doing, Simmons said. His colleague was startled until that moment Simmons self-confidence seemed boundless. Simmons told Simmons told his colleague about Lord Jim, which sent this is a story which centers on failure and redemption.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they wind up raising about, they start with a little less than $4 million, but they experience high levels of early success. And they're doing this in currency. He says he and Simmons kept buying British pounds and the currency kept soaring. They followed that move with accurate predictions for the Japanese yen, the West German Duchmark, and Swiss franc gains that grew the fund by tens of millions of dollars. Simmons was having a blast exploring his lifelong passion for financial speculation while trying to solve markets, perhaps the greatest challenge he had encountered. The fun would not last.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he comes up, you got to start somewhere, right? So, this is his first idea for a trading style. And what's so remarkable about the story is like he comes up with a lot of good ideas. They work for a good amount of time. He'll make a good amount of money and then they break. And that's where he's like, oh, crap, I have this problem. Most people quit. They pack it up. They go home. Simmons persisted. And now he's working with this other person. Doesn't matter. Simmons hoped he and make big money relying on a trading style that combined mathematical models, complicated charts, and a heavy dose of human intuition.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Simmons was bursting with self-confidence. This is like he's using it as fuel, it's pushing him. This is a positive thing. It's only negative to most of society, most other humans. But for entrepreneurs, anybody who wants to do something different, it's like rocket fuel. He says, and this is the inner monologue he's having, it looks like there's some structure here, Simmons thought. He just had to find it. Simmons decided to treat financial markets like any other chaotic system. There must be some way to model this, he thought.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is not gonna deter him though. And this is another example of the Nolan Bushnote quote that I just said, the only arrogant or self-confident enough to press their creative ideas on others. And what I mean by arrogance is I don't like disbelief. If you have a profound belief in yourself, a lot of times it's beneficial to get along with other humans if you hide it. But don't let them extinguish it. And by arrogance, like my definition of arrogance is different than other people's I don't believe in people that are super self-confident. I don't call them arrogance. What I consider arrogant is like people that think they know everything that they get to a point where they think they can stop learning from other people. I think that is arrogance. I don't think high levels of self-confidence is arrogance. You know, but you can never get to a level of arrogance where it's like, oh, I've mastered this. I figured I figured it out. I can stop learning now. No, that never happens. So he says, until then, Simmons had dabbled in investing, but he hadn't demonstrated any special talent. Somehow.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People telling you that you're wrong. All right, Math, and then he gets it from his peers too. Mathematicians were even more shocked. The idea that he might leave to play the market full-time was confounding. Academics were convinced he was squandering rare talent. And then this is one of his colleagues. We looked down on him. Like he had been corrupted and he had sold his soul to the devil. Now, here's the problem though. Simmons had never completely fit into the world of academia. And he says, I always felt like something of an outsider, no matter what I was doing. And so his friend says he, meaning Jim, really wanted to do unusual things, things others didn't think possible. Simmons would find it harder than he expected.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Desire to achieve wealth, and yet took him to his 40 to do this. And then when he finally does it, he gets an unbelievable amount of criticism. And I'm going to talk a lot about that today. He says, Simmons' father told him he was making a big mistake giving up a tenured position. Think about that. His dad's like bad move. You have a steady job. Jim doesn't want a steady job. He wants wealth. And think about if he lives, what would have happened if Jim listened to his dad here? He made $23 billion following his own intuition. Misfits only understand misfits. His dad wasn't. His dad's like, didn't understand it. Most people want that. Or maybe if they, I don't even know if they want that. Most people will accept that. Hey, I got a steady paycheck. I'm fine. If you really want to do something different, like you're gonna have to overcome”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Makes a jump, and then keep this other idea in your mind as I read the rest of the section to you. Only misfits understand misfits. That's why it's so important. If you happen to be a curious and driven person, to be exposing yourself to these, I feel biographies is the best vehicle for this. It's because you'll realize that everybody that doesn't really fit in, and if you are driven and curious, you don't fit into the rest of humanity. I think all of humanity is curious. They're not all driven, right? And so it's very important to expose yourself to other people like you so you realize, hey, everybody, like there's other people have gone through this, I can do this as well. And if you look to, you know, in many cases, your immediate surroundings, you're not going to find people that have the same personality traits or the same ideas or want the same things in life. And we're going to see this here. You know, Jim was obsessed. He had this idea to do something great about burning.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he eventually winds up at Stonybrook. He's going to build their math department. He goes back to academia, essentially, but he's not happy. So this is Jim Simmons at 33 years old. And this is a reminder that genius and madness are next door neighbors. Simmons decided to take a sabbatical year so he could undergo primal therapy. The approach involves screaming or otherwise articulating repressed pain primally as a newborn emerging from the womb. Simmons, who sometimes woke up screaming at night, was intrigued by the approach. So again, I have to say, like, the reason, the benefit of reading this book is because it's a book about struggle and persistence. And I think the ability to persist through struggle is applicable to every single thing in your life. And I think seeing somebody else do that over a multi-decade period and eventually succeed is extremely inspiring. I will tell you later.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What he was going to do next, but getting fired so abruptly convinced him that he needed to gain some control over his future. He just wasn't quite sure how This is Jim Simmons on Talent. Simmons developed a unique perspective on talent. He valued killers. And this is how he describes what a killer is. Those with a single-minded focus who wouldn't quit. That sounds a lot like him. It really does. And he talks about like, there's a lot of smart people, but some of them don't have any, like, they don't have any original ideas in their head. He says some academics were super smart, yet they weren't original thinkers”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back to his personality. And I think part of the reason why so many smart people were willing to follow him, he was a really great listener. And so it talks about one of his colleagues that he's working with at IDA. He says he was a terrific listener. It was one thing to have a good ideas. It's another to recognize when others do. If there was a pony in your pile of horse manure, he would find it.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Players don't need to know why their opponent is glum or exuberant to profit from those moods. They just have to identify the moods themselves. Simmons and the code breakers proposed a similar approach to predicting stock markets. So something I always repeat to people is like, you just, in life, it's just a good idea to stay as close as possible to the money. And in this case, we see gamblers doing that. People where they are judged on their P&L immediately usually derive insights that theorists or people that are not practitioners do not. And so that's why I think it's just good life advice to stay close to the money. You'll obtain information through trial and error and through experience that others just won't.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is the point? What drives most entrepreneurs? And I use the word entrepreneurs. Anybody that wants to master their craft? In my opinion on this is like, yeah, we all wouldn't make a lot of money, but I think it's more like seeing money as a means to buy our independence. And so in that sense, like, I think control motivates most entrepreneurial type personalities than money does. He says his earlier career doubts resurfaced. Simmons wondered if another kind of job might bring more fulfillment and excitement and perhaps some wealth. The mounting pressures finally got to Simmons. He decided to make a break. So he's 23 years old here. It is going to be 17 years from this point till he actually does what he wants to do, which is, you know, build wealth through trading. Now, he jumps out of academia and he starts working for a, like a very secretive intelligence group that works.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On today and then focus on the next thing. Just keep going forward. Do not let your mind beat you. All right, so it says, this is the very next page and gives you a description of like what he's trying to do. He's teaching, he's doing all this stuff, but he's also has multiple jobs because he still has this desire to be rich. Simmons was hustling for money, but it wasn't simply to pay off his debts. He hungered for true wealth. Simmons saw how wealth can grant independence and influence. Jim understood at an early age that money is power, his first wife says. He didn't want people to have power over him. So this is what I always talk about. What is the...”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But a seed had been planted Okay, so right around this time in his life, he's doing some really good work in mathematics and he wins a prestigious three-year teaching position at MIT. So he starts doing that, but almost immediately he experiences an existential crisis. And this is going to happen a lot in his life, which makes it even more remarkable that he was able to persist through all this. So he says, Simmons began to question his future. The next few decades seemed laid out for him all too neatly. Research, teaching, more research, and still more teaching. Simmons loved mathematics, but he also needed a new adventure. He seemed to thrive on overcoming odds and defying skepticism, and he didn't see obstacles on the horizon. At just twenty three years old, Simmons was experiencing an existential crisis. Is this it? Am I going to do this my whole life? There has to be more.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so far we have this super smart, super driven, super confident person with a strong personality hell-bent on doing something great with his life. Okay, so that's a really important part to understand Jim Simpsons as a person and understand how he's able to do what he was able to do. So at this point in the story, he's already in college. And this is when he first gets introduced to the idea of trading, because at the time he was just focused on pure mathematics. He thought his life, he was just going to be an academic. That's what he thought his life was going to be. So he says he began getting up early to drive to San Francisco so he could be at Merrill Lynch's office at 7.30 in the morning in time for the opening of trading in Chicago. For hours, he would stand and watch prices flash on a big board, making trades while trying to keep up with the action. It was kind of a rush, Simmons recalled. When Barbara became pregnant, there were too many balls for Simmons to juggle. Reluctantly he put a stop to his training.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So at this point in the book, Jim's about 18 or 19. He meets his first wife. And really what this is an indication of before I read it to you, this is an indication when you hear what his future mother-in-law says about him, that Jim had a very strong personality. What the book goes into great detail is, you know, he's got a lot of brilliant people that work with him over several decades in his life. And he's the one responsible for managing all these billion people. So I don't think you could do that without a strong personality. So it says his wife's name was Barbara. It says, Barbara was too young to wed, her mother insisted. She also worried about a potential power imbalance between Barbara and her self-assured fiance. Years later, he's going to wipe the flor with you, she warned Barbara.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another aspect of his personality that kind of shed some light on how is it possible that he was able to persist through all the struggles that he encounters throughout his life? And he says, it's nice to be very rich. I observe that even before he's rich, Simmons says. I had no interest in business, which is not to say I had no interest in money. So what Jim is saying there, he had a persistent and burning desire to be wealthy So, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about his confidence before I get there. I think this is a good idea, and it's how it just says he really liked to think, especially about mathematics, but also how he used his mind to solve problems. And so Jim continues. He says, I realize I might not be spectacular or the best, but I could do something good. I just had that confidence.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exciting career to do what was expected of him. Interesting to note if you ever look at when older people are close to death than we are, hopefully, they are looking back on their lives. Usually one of the biggest regrets is that right there, that I didn't live my life. I lived a life other people expected of me. That's something you just definitely don't want to do. He says, and this is Jim talking about the lesson he got from his father. The lesson was do what you like in life. not what you feel you should What you feel what you feel you should do, Simmons says. It's something I never forgot What Jimmy liked to do more than anything else was think often about mathematics”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it says the 14 year old was trying to earn some spending money working at a garden supply store near his home. It wasn't going well. The young man found himself so lost in thought that he had misplaced the sheep manure, planting seeds, and most everything else. Weeks later the couple who owned the store asked Jimmy about his long term plans. I want to study mathematics at MIT. They burst out laughing. Now this is the interesting part. The skepticism didn't bother Jimmy. The teenager was filled with unnatural confidence and an unusual determination to accomplish something special. There's a great quote by Nolan Bushnell. He's the founder of Atari and the founder of Chuck E. Cheese, and he was also the mentor of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs worked for Nolan when he was 19 years old. When Steve was 19, that is. And he said in his book,”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so I want to start talking about his early life. I'm going to really focus on his personality because what the author was just saying there, like, that's a bizarre occurrence, a bizarre situation to happen where he dabbled in, he barely dabbled in trading, didn't dedicate his full attention to it until he's over 40, then struggled for more than a decade before actually being proven that his thesis was correct. Like, what kind of person is able to persist that length of time? And I think that's, if you had to summarize If you have to summarize this book, that's a good word to summarize it. It's persistence. The entire book is a story of just Jim constantly running into a problem, doubting himself, but carrying on anyways, figuring out a solution. Then he has some success. Then he runs into another problem. And this just happens over and over and over again. So that's really how I think of the life of Jim Simmons as really a life of persistence. So let's go to his early life.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's how humans learn. And so I wouldn't, even if you have a belief that something that you can do something or that something's possible and other people aren't telling you automatically, oh, it's impossible, the only way to see if those other people are right is to actually try. And that's exactly what Jim does. That's a testament to this entire book.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then Jim says that's kind of the way I feel about publicity. So there's something that the author says in the very beginning of the book that I think holds true to for a lot of the entrepreneurs that we studying in this podcast. And he says, I was most fascinated by a striking paradox. Simmons and his team shouldn't have been the ones to master the market. Simmons never took a single finance class, didn't care very much for business, and until he turned forty only dabbled in trading. A decade later, he still hadn't made much headway, and so whenever I read things like that, my mind always goes back to this quote from the autobiography of Henry Ford, where Henry says, why is people always know exactly why something won't work? That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. So what Henry's saying there and what the author is also saying is like, experts have a lot of good ideas, but they also have a lot of ideas why things won't work. And the unknown unknowns in life will always outnumber the known knowns. And the only way to discover true unique new knowledge is to trial.”
2020-01-26 · Founders · #108 Jim Simons (Money Printer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source