FREE NEWSLETTER
THIS MONTH SAW THE publication of a remarkable biography: The Man Who Solved the Market chronicles the life and career of hedge fund manager James Simons. Over the past 31 years, Simons’s Medallion Fund has clocked average returns of 66% per year. Even after Medallion’s fees—which are the highest in the industry—investors took home average returns of 39% a year.
By way of comparison, the U.S. stock market historically has returned about 10% a year. To put this in further perspective, investors who put $1,000 into Medallion at the beginning of 1988 would have seen their investment grow to nearly $28 million by year-end 2018.
How did Simons accomplish this? The short answer is that no one knows the full details—or, rather, no one is permitted to speak about it. Simons, who had been a math professor before he left for Wall Street, developed an algorithmic approach to trading. Instead of engaging in the usual sort of stock analysis—evaluating a company’s products, management and financial results—Simons instead looked for “signals” buried deep within trading data. According to a colleague, Simons doesn’t make money on every trade, but he gets it correct just enough of the time. “We’re right 50.75 percent of the time,” said the colleague, “but we’re 100 percent right 50.75 percent of the time.” Parenthetically, he said, “You can make billions that way.”
As an individual investor, how should you think about this—or should you even think about it?
One approach would be to simply ignore Simons, to recognize him as an anomaly. After all, his results have been so outstanding that he’s literally in a league of his own. He’s done better than Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, George Soros—everyone. It’s hardly worth comparing your results to his, just as you wouldn’t lose sleep if you couldn’t keep up with an Olympic swimmer or sprinter. It would be unhealthy and unrealistic to even give it a second thought.
But what about comparisons that are more realistic—to colleagues, friends and neighbors? Should we worry about how our successes measure up relative to theirs? This requires a delicate balance, because you want to compare in ways that are productive and don’t risk leaving you demoralized. Here’s how I’d approach it:
1. Develop a personal yardstick. Everybody has their own goals. Some want to send their children to private school, while others want to retire early. Some like to travel, while others like to give to charity. Some like the security of money in the bank, while others say, “You can’t take it with you.”
Because no two people are alike, I recommend developing your own personal yardstick for success. Maybe your goal is to save $1 million. If that’s the case, build out a year-by-year plan for yourself, then measure yourself only relative to that plan. This will help you stay on track—and it carries another valuable benefit: If your neighbor shows up in a new BMW, you won’t necessarily have to employ willpower to ignore it or suppress feelings of envy. You can simply recognize it as part of your neighbor’s plan and not part of yours. While it may sound like a platitude to say that you should view other people as different and not better, I really believe that is indeed the case when it comes to financial planning.
2. Recognize that it’s the journey that matters. My father, who is in his 80s, has a friend who retired on his 50th birthday. While that may seem like the very definition of success, academic research suggests otherwise. Counterintuitive as it may sound, hitting the jackpot isn’t what makes us most content. Rather, it’s the regular day-to-day feeling of progress in our work that makes us happiest.
Wouldn’t we all prefer more financial security rather than less? Of course. But the research says that, ironically, your neighbor who sold his business to Google may not be as happy as the person who’s still working toward that goal. Achieving long-desired life objectives can be anticlimactic and leave people feeling a lack of purpose. They’ve even found this to be true among Nobel Prize winners.
3. Don’t judge a book by its cover. There’s an expression among financial planners that you really don’t know someone until you’ve seen their tax return. I’ve found this to be true. While I can’t quantify it, I have seen very little correlation between people’s bank accounts and their lifestyles. The lesson: Don’t measure yourself against your neighbors or your friends, because what you see is just part of the story—and that part may be awfully deceptive.
Adam M. Grossman’s previous articles include A Graceful Exit, Time Out and Staying Home. Adam is the founder of Mayport Wealth Management, a fixed-fee financial planning firm in Boston. He’s an advocate of evidence-based investing and is on a mission to lower the cost of investment advice for consumers. Follow Adam on Twitter @AdamMGrossman.
Want to receive our weekly newsletter? Sign up now. How about our daily alert about the site's latest posts? Join the list.
Investing in my children has been my best return…great article.