If the guy made $14 billion in trading based on mathematical modeling, I would say that's pretty close to a "holy grail".
No one will speak of their Holy Grails, but I do believe methods seldom having a loss, and still be considered "HG". But one would have to think way outside the bun.
I love how he talks about how proud he is of the foundation, that the wife started, but adds in, "with my money". He already has so much, and yet has to point out that the wife started the foundation with his money. Sounds like the guy would hate to lose a quarter on the street.
To me it's not a holy grail. A holy grail as per my opinion is a system that has 2 to 1 win-loss ratio and a 50% winning rate (0.5 expectancy). Anything lesser than this expectancy is a sub par holy grail.
How much did he start out with? Actually, it is easy to win in trading. The hard part is discipline to go with the plan and the patience for the price to go up.
Are you kidding.... He's freaking delirious... FWIW - I'm currently reading Nick Radge's book "Unholy Grails". Pretty light reading and not overly challenging - right up my alley..
Simons is one of the smartest people in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chern–Simons_theory He made mathematical discoveries then for an encore he made 20 billion trading. Their foundation promotes science research. To bag on Simons you must be either 5'6" or 3 inches. I have watched pretty much every talk he has gave and his edge is ultimately in his ability to interview/hire brilliant people, assemble a great team and then be doing data science and using machine learning for decades ahead of the crowd. The most interesting thing I have heard him say is how one of their signals was based on data that made absolutely no logical predictive sense for markets but being so it was also unexploited for so long. That also though gives a glimpse of how they are looking at everything data wise.