The Story Behind Getting Jim Simons to Talk

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- How do you get the greatest hedge-fund manager in recent history to talk to you? That was the challenge facing Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman, my guest on the latest Masters in Business.

To write his latest book, "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution," Zuckerman needed to convince Simons, the founder of hedge-fund company Renaissance Technologies LLC, to speak with him. He tells us how he eventually persuaded Simons to sit down for more than 10 hours of interviews. 

Their conversations traced Simons' career from U.S. government code breaker to chairman at the mathematics department of SUNY Stony Brook to the founding of Renaissance, whose main investment vehicle, the Medallion Fund, earned annual returns of 66% from 1989 to 2018.

Zuckerman is the three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award for business journalism, covering big trades, big firms and big personalities. The book will be released on Monday.

His favorite books can be seen here. My review of "The Man Who Solved the Market" is here.

You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras on Apple iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, Google, Bloomberg and Stitcher. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Next week, we speak with former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, author of 11 books, including most recently, "Inside the Five-Sided Box: Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon."

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Barry Ritholtz is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.