entirely serious, just wondering as Buffett seems to be in the news a lot recently with his team of PhDs running ultra-high speed computers, why isn't Jim Simons richer than a guy sitting somewhere in Omaha reading paper printouts all day?
Buffett founded Buffett Partnership, Ltd. in 1956. Buffett net worth as of February 2019 = USD 84.9. Simons founded Renaissance Technologies in 1982. Simons net worth as of February 2019 = USD 21.5 USD. Now ask yourself: If Buffett dies today and Simons keeps compounding for an additional 26 years, would he grow USD 21.5 into more than USD 84.9? Simons has been more succesful than Buffett. Simons has made his fortune during a more competitive environment where Buffett in the same period has only slightly outperformed the S&P 500 using indirect leverage.
yeah, well i guess he should've gotten in on the game earlier then again there's been news coverage of how more and more quant strategies are running out of steam, so it'll be interesting to see if they can post returns at the same rate going forward
Jim Simmons is 81 years old. Warren Buffet is older at 88. People are working at doing away with HFT; for example IEX. Retail traders cannot trade HFT. Where as Warren's value investing can be adopted by mortals.
Here is a great article by Morgan Housel that explains a lot. Key excerpt: https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-freakishly-strong-base/
The whole article stresses on how young Buffet started his investment, and suggested if he started interested in investment at 22 rather at 10 he would have 1.9 Billion rather than 81 billions. Then his conclusion is "Start investing as young as you can". Then the Amazon story just negated his statement, as we all know Bezos has made a much bigger fortune than Buffet in about 25 years (instead of 60 years by Buffet).