Skip navigation
The Man Who Solved the Market
A review of

The Man Who Solved the Market

How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution


An Awe-Inspiring Figure

by David Meyer

Wall Street Journal writer Gregory Zuckerman details the life of codebreaker, polymath, early quant investor and billionaire Jim Simons.

Wall Street Journal writer Gregory Zuckerman – author of The Greatest Trade Ever and The Frackers – presents the saga of mathematician Jim Simons, who started with no grounding in finance but became a transformational figure in financial markets. Through quantitative modeling, data analytics, algorithmic trading and mathematical formulations, Simons’s trading platform became the industry’s most successful franchise, netting a 66% annual return and bringing in more than $100 billion in profits since 1988.

Zuckerman takes a deep dive – with remarkable access to Simons and to his current and former employees – into this larger-than-life story, which investors, traders, quants, mathematicians, finance professors and students will find engaging and instructive.