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

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.&nbsp;
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.&nbsp;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

It’s the history of business. How did Hitler’s favorite car become synonymous with hippies? What got Thomas Edison tangled up with the electric chair? Did someone murder the guy who invented the movies? Former Planet Money hosts Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith examine the surprising stories of businesses big and small and find out what you can learn from those who founded them.

It&rsquo;s the history of business. How did Hitler&rsquo;s favorite car become synonymous with hippies? What got Thomas Edison tangled up with the electric chair? Did someone murder the guy who invented the movies? Former Planet Money hosts Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith examine the surprising stories of businesses big and small and find out what you can learn from those who founded them.

Business History

How Jim Simons Built a Machine That Beat the Market

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/671e380b-b9b6-4763-aff2-b3b400d42324/transcript

A live mash-up between Business History and Bloomberg's Everybody's Business.

On platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket you can bet on just about anything - from Taylor Swift's album sales to whether President Trump will say a certain word in a speech. Many people worry about these new prediction markets, but the concept is far older than some critics might think. 

We go back centuries to Papal conclaves; hear about how counting drinking toasts stood in for political polling; and learn how the US government tried using betting markets to predict terrorist attacks.   

A live mash-up between Business History&nbsp;and Bloomberg's <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/series/everybodys-business">Everybody's Business</a>.
On platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket you can bet on just about anything - from Taylor Swift's album sales to whether President Trump will say a certain word in a speech. Many people worry about these new prediction markets, but the concept is far older than some critics might think.&nbsp;
We go back centuries to Papal conclaves; hear about how counting drinking toasts stood in for political polling; and learn how the US government tried using betting markets to predict terrorist attacks.&nbsp; &nbsp;

Betting on Taylor Swift or Who'll Be Made Pope: The Past and Present of Prediction Markets

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/fce8252c-b54b-4df5-853e-b41100c73b69/transcript

Once if you wrote a hit song there was no guarantee it would make you rich. So songwriters formed a cartel - the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. ASCAP started suing concert halls, cafes and nightclubs to claim back royalties. Seemed fair... except ASCAP started a war when it demanded radio stations turn over 10% of their revenues.    

ASCAP's monopoly on music rights was broken, but they'd made songs into valuable financial assets. This set the scene for an epic copyright beef between Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, and for David Bowie to turn his pop hits into a complex special purpose vehicle... a securitization pool! 

Write to us at businesshistory@pushkin.fm

Once if you wrote a hit song there was no guarantee it would make you rich. So songwriters formed a cartel - the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. ASCAP started suing concert halls, cafes and nightclubs to claim back royalties. Seemed fair... except ASCAP started a war when it demanded radio stations turn over 10% of their revenues.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;
ASCAP's monopoly on music rights was broken, but they'd made songs into valuable financial assets. This set the scene for an epic copyright beef between Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, and for David Bowie to turn his pop hits into a complex special purpose vehicle... a securitization pool!&nbsp;
Write to us at <a href="mailto:businesshistory@pushkin.fm">businesshistory@pushkin.fm</a>

Bowie, McCartney & Michael Jackson: How Songwriters Learned to Play Hardball

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/732277cb-31f6-4e9a-8dcf-b40f00a4a940/transcript

Ford was the pre-eminent American car maker and Henry Ford was the king of modern manufacturing, until a Michigan cigar salesman decided to consolidate a bunch of small auto companies into a single firm to defeat the Colossus of Detroit. 

General Motors united the likes of Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac and decided to live by "the laws of Paris dressmakers" to make cars that were more stylish and fashionable than the austere, black-painted Model T that was coming out of the Ford plant. 

Write to us at businesshistory@pushkin.fm

Ford was the pre-eminent American car maker and Henry Ford was the king of modern manufacturing, until a Michigan cigar salesman decided to consolidate a bunch of small auto companies into a single firm to defeat the Colossus of Detroit.&nbsp;
General Motors united the likes of Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac and decided to live by "the laws of Paris dressmakers" to make cars that were more stylish and fashionable than the austere, black-painted Model T that was coming out of the Ford plant.&nbsp;
Write to us at businesshistory@pushkin.fm

How GM Beat Ford

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/b9694cee-2b45-4edd-9bd8-b3ec00ed4ee4/transcript

How Jim Simons Built a Machine That Beat the Market

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