Pushkin Industries
07 January 2026
Jim Simons loved cigarettes and math. He started out as an academic mathematician and a Cold War code breaker - but decided to use his skills to write computer programs to spot investment opportunities in the financial markets. Simons and his fierce nerds bought up all the data sets they could find - reports, books, magnetic tapes - and built machine learning algorithms to hunt for tiny market discrepancies they could exploit. The investment funds Simons started made extraordinary profits - so is this the end for human emotions in financial trading? Write to us at businesshistory@pushkin.fm See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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