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Jim Simons

Founder, Renaissance Technologies

Search every verified Jim Simons interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Jim Simons, the founder of Renaissance Technologies, has discussed the firm's approach to hiring and investment strategy in various interviews. He stated that Renaissance never hired traditional Wall Street traders, instead employing mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists who had no prior experience in finance. Simons said this decision was based on the belief that scientists are trained to trust process over intuition and to remove emotion from decision-making, which he described as essential for a systematic, model-driven approach. He noted that Renaissance is "100% model driven" and that no trades are made based on human judgment, with the firm adhering strictly to what its models dictate. Simons has also spoken about the firm's reliance on data and the identification of market anomalies. He said that the early days of the firm involved manually gathering data from sources like the Federal Reserve, and that over time the models improved by finding "subtle anomalies" in the data. He described the process as a form of machine learning, where predictive signals are tested on historical data and either added to the system or discarded. Simons emphasized that the firm's success came from hiring smart people, giving them freedom, fostering collaboration, and providing the best infrastructure, while also acknowledging the role of persistence and luck.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“I mean, I'm not a big fan of the way in which the economy has evolved. I think we ought to rather have growth at the risk of inflation than have no growth and say we've held the dollar value of our dollar. Who cares if everyone's out of work? You got 20% unemployment, a wonderful dollar is not going to be so helpful.”

“So, Lenny seemed to get have get less and less interested in models and more and more interested in reading the news reel. And Lenny was always reading the news instead of thinking about models. And then he started having opinions on what was going to go up and what was going to go down. This was all foreign currencies, bonds, that kind of stuff. And I started listening to him and he was right. He was right enough ti”

“I'm not a big fan of this government. I'm not a big fan of the of the tax bill that just passed. Except that... it made no sense to continue the tax cut for rich guys like me. That made no sense whatsoever. And and and and for some of you out here probably it didn't make much sense. But if that was the price to pay as it apparently was cuz we have a rather timid president. That was the price to pay for extending the ”

“I consider high frequency trading to be natural and definitely socially useful. What's happened is as the markets have become electronic and computers have been applied to generating prices and accepting trades and all the rest. The markets have grown tremendously more liquid. Spreads have come down. The bid-ask spreads have come down. The fellows who used to be, you know, the specialists on the floor, specialists of”

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