Bruce Kover - Caxton Fund

Bruce Kover worked his title as the left-winger of the extraordinare investor, George Soros. However, Kover did not like the business interviews very much.

Kovner graduated his BA in political science and economics from Harvard in 1966, also taught political science at Harvard and University of Pennsylvania. Somehow, he dropped out of the Kennedy School before he completed his Ph.D.

And that the starting point for his financier’s career in trading the commodities, at the office of Michael Marcus and also co-worked with Jack Schwager at Commodities Corp.

Kovner set up his own hedge fund, Caxton, in 1983. Some reports said Caxton had returned 28% annually and he made some US$500 million for his own fortune in the year 2001. He made his fundamental decisions for currency and futures trading on the judgments based on his team’s analysis of the impact of the worldwide political and economic events.

While in a bear market, his investment tactics will depend on sharp countertrend rallies to sell, this is for the purpose of placing [your] stops at a point that will reasonably indicate the trade is wrong, not at a point determined primarily by the maximum dollar amount you are willing to lose. Staying rational and disciplined under pressure is the key for his success in this hedge fund business.

James Harris Simons - Renaissance Technologies

James (Jim) Simons, is the grandson of a Jewish entrepreneur who ran a shoe factory business in Massachusetts. He graduated a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1958, and received his PhD in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1961 at the age of 23 years.

During 1964-1968, Simons worked as a research staff at the Communications Research Division of Institute of Defense Analysis (IDA). He also took the title as a professor in mathematics at MIT and Harvard University. In 1968 he was appointed Chairman of the Department of Mathematics at Stony Brook University.

Simons' most influential research onto the wide interest and application of many scientists as well as physicists involved the discovery and application of certain geometric measurements, which was resulted in the Chern-Simons invariants, or Chern-Simons theory. In 1974, his theory was published in Characteristic Forms and Geometric Invariants, co-authored with the differential geometer Shiing-Shen Chern. The theory is still currently used in theoretical physics, particularly string theory.

In 1978, he left his academic career in order to establish and manage an investment fund that traded in commodities and financial instruments on his cutting-edge, well-discrete math-whiz calculation methods which is now still a secrecy in this hedge fund industry.