Jim Simons, mathematician turned government codebreaker turned trader, revolutionized quantitative investing

A landmark hedge fund court case once reshaped high finance

Hedge fund traders tied to insider trading by probing prosecutors are relatively rare. When billionaire hedge fund legend Steve Cohen, founder of SAC Capital, pleaded guilty to trading on inside information, Wall Street trembled. The outcome of the case remains a cautionary tale for traders today.

A look at the biography of Sam Bankman-Fried by author Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis released a book, "Going Infinite," on the day the subject of the book began his high-profile fraud trial. The book delves into the life of Sam Bankman-Fried, a young billionaire in the cryptocurrency world. Find out what the bestselling author discovered over two years and 100 interviews with Bankman-Fried.

Eleven of modern history's greatest investors

The greatest investors have all made a fortune off of their success and, in many cases, have helped millions of others achieve similar returns. Read about the lives and approaches of Carl Icahn, Warren Buffett, George Soros, and more.

Peter Tuchman is known as the 'Einstein of Wall Street'

Peter Tuchman has worked on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange for over four decades and ranks among the most famous traders in history. “I still get butterflies in my stomach every morning when I come into work,” he said.

A hedge funds timeline, from the 1940s onward

Since Alfred Winslow Jones formed the first hedge fund in 1949, traders have rolled out an increasingly complex array of investment strategies. They all aim to beat increasingly efficient markets and/or to provide ample downside protection against sell-offs.

Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing'

Graham was an investor, author, and professor who was also Warren Buffett's teacher and mentor during his time at Columbia University. Graham is still considered one of the most influential people in the world of investing today.

Jimmy Zhong pulled off one of the biggest bitcoin heists in history

Jimmy Zhong performed a bitcoin heist—stealing more than 51,000 BTC from Silk Road in 2012. For years, he stayed under the radar, using crypto mixers to hide his tracks. But one small mistake in 2019 led investigators straight to him.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

One $100 investment in the Medallion Fund skyrockets over time

The Medallion Fund, the famously secretive quant fund that invests billions of dollars for the partners and employees of a single firm with a legendary track record, has trounced the market for more than three decades. While its results are an extreme outlier, this visualization showcases the power of compound interest.

How Jim Chanos used a Wall Street Journal article to uncover Enron's fraud

After seeing an article in the Wall Street Journal about the unclear financials of energy companies, Chanos' firm Kynikos Associates began investigating the finances and accounting of Enron, an American energy corporation that was the seventh-largest company at the time. The firm ended up making $500M on its short positions against Enron.

How math whizzes exploit sportsbooks

Chris Dirkus is a professional sports bettor who approaches the hobby as a math problem, not from a fan's perspective. He focuses on mispriced odds in popular games where many fans are betting for high liquidity. He's one of a rare segment of sports bettors exploiting slow models and human mistakes.

How JPMorgan Chase became America's biggest bank

From the railroad and steel consolidations brokered by John Pierpont Morgan on Wall Street more than a century ago, to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the financial crisis, and Jamie Dimon’s leadership, J.P. Morgan Chase has been at the center of finance for more than a century.

Read about the 'gatekeeper' of the stock market, former index chair at S&P Global

David Blitzer, the former index chair at S&P Global, earned the nickname "gatekeeper" of the stock market after helping decide which companies made it into the S&P 500 for 24 years. Blitzer became a legend in the world of indexing and has a reputation for being even-tempered and always wearing a bow tie.

How to make a billion dollars, with Brad Jacobs

Brad Jacobs is a serial entrepreneur who has launched eight billion-dollar enterprises during his storied financial career. With companies focused in energy, waste, and more, Jacobs has stuck to a roll-up playbook of consolidating small players into one conglomerate within an industry, a common tactic of similar private equity firms. This podcast from Founders summarizes Jacobs' book detailing his approach.

The story of two female programmers running the simulations behind chaos theory's discovery

Margaret Hamilton and Ellen Fetter worked on MIT's 800-pound Royal McBee LGP-30 computer, which was fed binary code on paper tape to perform computations. Among the computations performed were those involving equations describing the motion of gas in a circulating fluid for Edward Lorenz, widely considered the father of chaos theory.

When he first enrolled at Princeton University, Jeff Bezos wanted to study physics

He later changed his major to electrical engineering and computer science. He graduated Summa Cum Laude and received job offers at Intel, Nokia, and Accenture, but he declined those offers in favor of a job at a fintech startup.

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

Charles Schwab kick-starts zero-commission era for retail investors

Throughout history, retail investing was often too expensive for many individuals. That’s because investors owed the cost of the trade as well as the commission and fees due to the broker. Charles Schwab revolutionized the retail investing landscape in 2019 when it announced it would slash all fees on stock trading. This quickly prompted other brokerages to follow suit. Read more in this article.

VisiCalc was the first electronic spreadsheet, released with Apple II's personal computer in 1979

Before 1979, managers were essentially information processors working off paper ledgers. Scenario modeling was slow, manual, and expensive. Companies were understood as organizations that built things with financial analysis as secondary. VisiCalc made calculation so cheap that you could work iteratively, setting out forecasts and tweaking assumptions until you got the answer you wanted. Oks argues It created a new way of seeing the world.

Hear how Ray Dalio spends his time since he retired

Dalio emphasizes finding meaningful relationships, both in work and in life. After officially retiring from his hedge fund, Dalio says he spends his time learning, reading, and trying to mentor younger generations.

John Maynard Keynes was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century

Keynes influenced economic thought by arguing that governments should spend to stabilize economies during downturns. His ideas shaped the postwar international order and remain central to modern economic policy debates.

GameStop stock began a meteoric rise in January 2021, rallying from a low of $2.57 to as high as $438 when Keith Gill helped mobilize retail investors to drive prices higher

Keith Gill was a financial advisor who posted on social media under usernames including "Roaring Kitty." Backing from Chewy founder Ryan Cohen, who became GameStop's CEO, took things up a notch.

Coined in 1971, the man credited with naming Silicon Valley was originally writing about semiconductors

Silicon Valley gained its name from an article published in January 1971, in Electronic News. Author Don Hoefler used the term in his headline for an article he was writing about the semiconductor industry. Hoefler is credited with naming the multi-trillion dollar area that is still called Silicon Valley today.

Use this day trading simulator to practice buying and selling stocks while leveraging real-time data and trading charts

Want to try day trading but don't want to risk losing cash? This simulator gives users access to "unlimited" fake money, as well as the option to convert their simulation accounts to the real deal later on.

Computer pioneer Alan Turing was also an elite runner

Alan Turing is credited with helping to found modern computer science, in addition to cracking the Nazi code known as Enigma. Beyond these world-historical achievements, the British mathematician also nearly represented his country in the Olympics in the marathon, running just 11 minutes slower than the eventual gold recipient at the 1948 games. Read more on this lesser-known aspect of the man here.

How one man placed the first short against the Dutch East India Company

Isaac Le Maire, a Dutch businessman and cofounder of the Dutch East India Company, is said to be history's first short seller, betting against the Dutch East India Company's stock price. Le Maire, who had been fired from the spice trading company over an unclear financial dispute, began spreading false rumours about the company to encourage people to sell their stock in order to tank its value.

Y Combinator was founded in 2005 to bridge gaps between founders and investors

In one of Paul Graham’s essays on his website, he took the time to explain how and why he and his cofounders (including his girlfriend at the time, and now wife, Jessica Livingston), came up with the idea of and eventually created Y Combinator.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.