"Before Jim Simons was running a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, he was the head of the mathematics department at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York. It was there that he attracted some of the top mathematicians to work alongside him at the university. However, Simons’ ambitions went beyond mathematics. In 1978 he left academia to found a trading firm which eventually became Renaissance Technologies. Simons filled his firm with brilliant mathematicians, many of whom were former colleagues. One of these former colleagues in particular, James Ax, was instrumental in getting the firm off the ground. After trading in futures markets for the firm for a few years, Ax and Simons launched the Medallion Fund in 1988. The fund was named after the prestigious awards both had received in mathematics. However, the early years of Medallion weren’t easy. In its first year (1988) the fund only returned 9% (net of fees) while the S&P 500 was up over 16%, and in its second year the fund suffered a 4% loss while S&P 500 was up over 30%. Tensions mounted internally and Ax was bought out of the firm in 1989. Following this, Simons had Elwyn Berlekamp, a prominent game theorist, re-design the firm’s trading system from the ground up in order to get it back to profitability. It worked. In 1990, the Medallion Fund returned 55% net of fees. However, as the fund became more successful, Simons became more obsessed with making it even better. He called Berlekamp constantly with different ideas on how to increase the fund’s returns. He would call about gold prices. He would call about one futures market or another. The calls seemed never ending. Under constant pestering from Simons, Berlekamp quit." https://ofdollarsanddata.com/medallion-fund/ tbh, not that hard, just get better at researching https://www.perplexity.ai/search/elwyn-berlekamp-published-cont-._THwXHUS4S72f6xa1VvIg From "The Man Who Solved the Markets" Main Categories
Get better at researching? Why, when I can get you to do it for me? Isn't that what a good game theorist would do?