? It took him four years to complete the undergraduate and postgraduate courses in mathematics at MIT, and another two years to get his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. He won a three-year teaching position at MIT with his thesis "Transitivity of Holographic System". However, only 1 year later, at the age of 25, he got a teaching post at Harvard University.
? At the age of 26, he joined the think tank under the National Defense Analysis Institute, which was mainly responsible for deciphering military codes of other countries. At this time, the paper Minimal Variations in Riemannian Manifolds was published, and a partial differential equation called Simmons Equation was proposed.
? At the age of 30, he took over the reconstruction of the Mathematics Department of new york University at Shixi. During this period, Yang Zhengning was a colleague of his physics department.
? At the age of 36, he was already a geometer. Together with him, he published the article Eigenforms and Geometric Constants, and put forward Chen-Simmons constant. Won the highest prize in American mathematics.
? However, he was bent on making big money since he was a child, so at the age of 40, he set up his first company called Monemetrics, which is a combination of money and economics. Which means he's making money by quantifying. Since then, there has been one less mathematician engaged in research and one more quantitative father engaged in finance. 1982 company changed its name to Fuxing technology company. The subsequent Grand Medal Fund was well known. Up to now, the management scale has exceeded $60 billion.
? There was a question: What's the difference between a Ph.D. in Mathematics and pizza?
? Answer: A big pizza can feed a family of four, but a doctor of mathematics can't.
? Simmons' experience completely negates this answer. It is said that his company's accumulated profit exceeds $654.38 billion. After him, mathematicians in the eyes of the world are no longer just nerds who are immersed in research and writing books. Instead, he became a financial expert in suits and ties, pointing out the country and being extremely rich. For a time, mathematics became a hot subject.
? During his 50 years in quantitative finance, he also witnessed the rapid development of the financial industry. Many famous figures in history are mentioned in the book, such as Mark Weitz, the founder of modern portfolio investment theory, Thorpe, the godfather of quantitative investment, Shannon, the pioneer of information theory, Kelly, the developer of Kelly formula, john murphy, the author of Technical Analysis of Financial Markets, Sakamoto Zongjiu, the originator of mean regression strategy, and charles dow, the inventor of Dow Jones.
? There are also some short stories, such as Greenspan, an economist he often consults, who will become the chairman of the Federal Reserve in the future; Michael Bloomberg used to be a fired salesman; It is said that Gann, the master of technical analysis, had a mediocre performance in actual combat, with only $6,543,800+when he died; Bezos was a programmer for David Shaw, a competitor of Simmons, and later he went out and founded Amazon. The person who beat the Bank of England by shorting the pound was actually druckenmiller, but Soros was very supportive, so he made a big bet; Also, it is said that the first money fund in the world was founded by Peter Brown's father, who was named by IBM as. ...
? These short stories are properly interspersed among them, attracting people to read the book in one breath. The central idea, like other biographies, embodies the hero's perseverance and the process of 10' s success in the end. During this period, I did not explore advanced mathematical theories and methods, but only quoted some terms to string together stories when necessary, which seemed unfathomable.
? Both quantitative investment, represented by Simmons, and value investment, represented by Buffett, have achieved sustained and great success, which has impacted the effective market theory discussed by academic circles from different angles. This will give great enlightenment to the later entrants and give investors confidence and guidance to overcome the market. After him, a large number of scholars and scientists devoted themselves to the field of quantification. The scale of investment has also expanded dramatically. According to incomplete statistics, the scale of quantitative trading has accounted for more than 1/3 of the trading volume in the US market. Of course, the performance of financial futures+quantitative trading+low margin trading model in several stock market crashes also made regulators doubt it.
? Although quantitative investment seems to have great competitive advantages in theory and practice, the return on investment of quantitative investment funds is not much better than that of traditional active management investment funds, except for a few Fuxing technology companies. The book also mentioned that as of the spring of 20 19, the average annualized rate of return of quantitative hedge funds with public performance in the past five years was 4.2%, while the average annualized rate of return of traditional hedge funds was 3.3% in the same period. In addition, the capacity of pure quantitative investment seems to be limited, and the transaction yield with large capacity will be regressed by the mean. In addition, in history, we have also faced events such as the closure of long-term capital companies and the quantitative earthquake in 2007. From August last year to June this year, 65438+ 10 in China, the quantitative strategy also encountered big problems.
? The profit and risk of the market always coexist, and the revival company can continue to this day, which is also related to Simmons' risk acumen. Simmons once said, "What should you do when you smell smoke?" ? Run! "This book also mentioned several incidents that almost caused big problems for the company, including the withdrawal of funds entrusted by the company to Madoff and the bankruptcy of the company's main trading channels. It is this kind of risk awareness and decisive execution that helps Fuxing technology company get out of danger.
? Of course, I am personally pessimistic about the development of AI. At the end of the book, I quote the quip of novelist Gary Sting Gatt to summarize the future road of financial companies and the direction of social development. "When children's education is replaced by algorithms, it is the end of the day, and nothing will be left."