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Comment by MaximumYComb | Hacker News Reader

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MaximumYComb·

The old system makes the man rich who can hire the right people with the "right" people skills.

The new system makes the man rich who can hire the right math graduates.

It seems like we've got the same system as always. The rich get richer.

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Cool tagline. But the richest men in this industry are math graduates.

No, it's the one who hire the graduates. It's literally what I wrote.

It sounds like you’d be surprised about how many industry leaders come from STEM backgrounds. If you take a headcount of the partners of all the quant firms that have been profitable over the last ten years, I’m not sure if STEM nerds would be the majority but they’d certainly make up a significant portion.

I’m pretty sure the Rentech and DE Shaw founders were mathematicians. I’ve heard Simons in particular is stupid good at math and there are apocryphal stories to that effect. Wouldn’t surprise me if other quant funds were also ran by the math-heads themselves as well

No need for apocryphal stories about Simons. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Veblen_Prize_in_Geometr....

The problem is the not so rich don't want to play or can't afford to play. I bet I do better than most traders out there and have been calling the market correctly for a significant period of time but I can't get enough money to move into the billion dollar range. Others who have the money aren't willing to risk it because they have made it using other methods are more likely to continue reinvesting in that, i.e. real estate.

You should read about James Simons, one of the richest of them all. He has a PhD in math from Berkeley and is, by all accounts, brilliant.

Most of the "true Quant" funds like rentech and tgs were founded but people with stem backgrounds like Jim Simons

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