Nelson Saiers

Last updated
Nelson Saiers
Born1974or1975(age 48–49)
Denver, Colorado
NationalityAmerican
Known forMathematics-based art
Notable workShortening: Making the Irrational Rational [1]
MovementContemporary Art
Alma mater University of Virginia
Scientific career
Fields Mathematics
Thesis Involutions Fixing Products of Projective Spaces  (1998)
Doctoral advisors Robert Evert Stong
Website nelsonsaiers.com

Nelson Saiers is an American mathematical artist and former hedge fund manager. Before 2014, he worked in finance as a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank AG and as the Chief Investment Officer at Saiers Capital, LLC (formerly Alphabet Management, LLC). In 2014, Saiers left finance to create mathematics-based art.

Contents

Early life and education

Nelson Saiers was born in Denver, Colorado. [2] He spent the first five years of his life in Ethiopia and Afghanistan while his father worked for the United States Agency for International Development. [3] At the age of one, Saiers was held at gunpoint in Ethiopia while passing through a security checkpoint in the aftermath of the overthrow of Haile Selassie. [2] [3] Saiers lived in Afghanistan during the Saur Revolution. [3] [2] Saiers' family relocated to Swaziland and Ghana before eventually moving to Virginia. [3]

In 1997, Saiers graduated from the University of Virginia. [4] In 1998, he received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Virginia at the age of 23. [5] His thesis, Involutions Fixing Products of Projective Spaces, was in algebraic topology and was advised by Robert Evert Stong. [6]

Financial career

Saiers began his trading career at Susquehanna International Group. He also later worked at UBS and Deutsche Bank. [7] At Deutsche Bank, Nelson was a Managing Director and ran a proprietary trading business focused on derivatives. [7]

In July 2010, Saiers left Deutsche Bank to join Alphabet Management, a New York hedge fund specializing in derivatives. [7] He was promoted to Chief Investment Officer in March 2011. [8] [9] Saiers' younger brother Scott also joined Alphabet in February 2012 as Head Trader. [10]

In December 2012, Alphabet announced that the firm would change its name to Saiers Capital, LLC. [11] Barron's described Saiers as having been a "star quant". [12]

Art career

In 2014, Saiers left finance to create mathematics-based art. [12] [13]

Saiers' art has been featured in solo shows at Harvard University's Leverett House, [14] Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, [15] and multiple New York City galleries. [12] [16] Saiers also installed a 9-foot inflatable rat covered with bitcoin references and code in front of the Federal Reserve as a homage to Satoshi Nakamoto and protests in New York City. [17] [18] In late 2021 Saiers commented on the Federal Reserve's "cheap money" monetary policy by installing a sculpture next to the Wall Street Charging Bull. It consisted of a gumball machine that was filled with $10 bills offered for 25 cents with an "Out of Order!" sign on its face. [19] [20]

Alcatraz

From July 2016 to February 2017, Saiers exhibited a large scale installation at Alcatraz titled "Shortening: Making the Irrational Rational". Combining properties of pi, prison vernacular, and literary references, the work addressed the "irrationally" long prison sentences that are given for minor, nonviolent drug violations. The exhibit featured the first several hundred digits of pi on football jerseys. Saiers explained, "In prison, long sentences are often referred to as 'football numbers' because the duration in years resembles numbers on a football jersey." [21] Saiers told KQED about the exhibit, "Pi is what's called an irrational number, which means it never ends nor repeats [...] Now the way to turn it into a rational number is to shorten it. So that's a very good metaphor for what needs to be done to these irrational prison sentences" to make them rational. [15]

The exhibit's jerseys hanging on a hemp clothesline also made reference to the phrase "hung out to dry" and the abandonment of inmates. [22] [23]

Wall Street

Saiers' "Inside Wall Street" series of paintings exhibited in 2016 was focused on financial crises and incorporated financial algorithms that his hedge fund team had previously written. [4] [16] Saiers' large scale sculpture, called "Arbitrage" placed a black graffitied Volkswagen Beetle in Chelsea, Manhattan in reference to the 2008 Volkswagen short squeeze leading to it briefly becoming the largest company in the world by market value. [13]

Philanthropy

In October 2013, during the graffiti artist Banksy's month-long New York project "Better Out Than In", Saiers made a public offer to donate $100,000 to the Hurricane Sandy rebuilding effort if Banksy created a legal mural in New York to raise awareness for people still affected by the storm. [24] After not hearing back from Banksy, Saiers decided to go forward with the $100,000 donation regardless of whether the mural would be created. In addition to his personal contribution, he raised another $142,000 from anonymous donors contingent on the creation of the mural. [25]

Nelson is affiliated with charity: water, which attempts to provide clean water to those in developing countries. Nelson is a Founding Member of The Well, a core group of donors who support charity: water. [26] [27] [28]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Speculation</span> Engaging in risky financial transactions

In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alcatraz Island</span> Island in San Francisco Bay, California, U.S.

Alcatraz Island is a small island 1.25 miles (2.01 km) offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison. In 1934, the island was converted into a federal prison, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The strong currents around the island and cold water temperatures made escape nearly impossible, and the prison became one of the most notorious in American history. The prison closed in 1963, and the island is now a major tourist attraction.

Renaissance Technologies LLC, also known as RenTech or RenTec, is an American hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York, on Long Island, which specializes in systematic trading using quantitative models derived from mathematical and statistical analysis. Their signature Medallion fund is famed for the best record in investing history. Renaissance was founded in 1982 by James Simons, a mathematician who formerly worked as a code breaker during the Cold War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert J. Shiller</span> American economist (born 1946)

Robert James Shiller is an American economist, academic, and author. As of 2022, he served as a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a fellow at the Yale School of Management's International Center for Finance. Shiller has been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) since 1980, was vice president of the American Economic Association in 2005, its president-elect for 2016, and president of the Eastern Economic Association for 2006–2007. He is also the co‑founder and chief economist of the investment management firm MacroMarkets LLC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raj Rajaratnam</span> American investments manager

Rajakumaran Rajaratnam is a Sri Lankan-American former hedge fund manager and founder of the Galleon Group, a New York-based hedge fund management firm. He is also the author his memoir, Uneven Justice: The Plot to Sink Galleon.

Alan Howard is a British billionaire hedge fund manager and co-founder of Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP. In February 2013, Forbes listed him as one of the 40 highest-earning hedge fund managers. In 2014, he was ranked 53rd on the UK's Sunday Times Rich List. According to Forbes, as of 2019, Howard's net worth is $1.6 billion.

Boaz Weinstein is an American hedge fund manager and founder of Saba Capital Management. He rose to prominence at Deutsche Bank in the early and mid 2000s with his credit default swap and capital structure arbitrage trading strategies. He then formed a proprietary trading group within Deutsche Bank. After leaving the bank in 2009, Weinstein started Saba Capital Management as a separate hedge fund. As of September 2022, Saba manages $4.8 billion in assets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bitcoin</span> Decentralized digital currency

Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight. Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that requires increasing quantities of electricity and guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Novogratz</span> American businessman

Michael Edward Novogratz is an American investor, formerly of the investment firm Fortress Investment Group. He is currently CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners which focuses on investments in cryptocurrency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charlie Shrem</span> American entrepreneur

Charles Shrem IV is an American entrepreneur and bitcoin advocate. He co-founded the now-defunct startup company BitInstant, and is a founding member of the Bitcoin Foundation. In 2014 he was sentenced to two years in prison for aiding and abetting the operation of an unlicensed money-transmitting business related to the Silk Road marketplace. He was released from prison in 2016. In 2017, he joined Jaxx and served as its chief operating officer, and founded cryptocurrency advisory CryptoIQ.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of bitcoin</span> Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset that uses cryptography to control its creation and management rather than relying on central authorities. Originally designed as a medium of exchange, Bitcoin is now primarily regarded as a store of value. The history of bitcoin started with its invention and implementation by Satoshi Nakamoto, who integrated many existing ideas from the cryptography community. Over the course of bitcoin's history, it has undergone rapid growth to become a significant store of value both on- and offline. From the mid-2010s, some businesses began accepting bitcoin in addition to traditional currencies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dismaland</span> 2015 art installation at Weston-super-Mare, England, by Banksy and others

Dismaland was a temporary art project organised by street artist Banksy in the seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England. Prepared in secret, the pop-up exhibition at the Tropicana, a disused lido, was "a sinister twist on Disneyland" that opened during the weekend of 21 August 2015 and closed on 27 September 2015, 36 days later. Banksy described it as a "family theme park unsuitable for children." The aesthetic of the "bemusement park" was potentially inspired by the "Dismayland" series of paintings created by American artist Jeff Gillette, who also participated in the exhibition.

Bitcoin was designed by its pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, to work as a currency, but its status as a currency is disputed. Economists define money as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account, and agree that bitcoin does not currently meet all these criteria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Delo</span> British entrepreneur and programmer

Ben Delo is a British entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and former executive of BitMEX. In 2022, Delo pleaded guilty to a United States Bank Secrecy Act violation and received a 30-month probation sentence.

Pantera Capital is an American hedge fund and venture capital firm focused on digital assets headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The fund specializes in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. It is one of the largest digital asset funds in the world by managed assets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bitcoin in El Salvador</span> The use and legal status of Bitcoin in El Salvador

El Salvador became the first country in the world to use bitcoin as legal tender, after having been adopted as such by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador in 2021. It has been promoted by Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who claimed that it would improve the economy by making banking easier for Salvadorans, and that it would encourage foreign investment. In 2023, Bukele has credited this change to fueling the increase in tourism to El Salvador by 95%.The adoption has been criticized both internationally and within El Salvador, due to the volatility of Bitcoin, its environmental impact, and lack of transparency regarding the government's fiscal policy.

Three Arrows Capital was a Singapore-based cryptocurrency hedge fund which was ordered to liquidate on 27 June 2022 by a court in the British Virgin Islands. It was founded in 2012 by Kyle Davies and Su Zhu. The company borrowed billions of dollars to fund its trading, and according to July 2022 bankruptcy filings, faces $3.5 billion in creditors' claims. The fund appears to have lost in excess of $3 billion over 2021 and 2022, making its collapse one of the largest hedge-fund trading losses of all time.

Su Zhu is a Singaporean entrepreneur. Alongside his longtime friend and business partner Kyle Davies, he is a founder of the now-defunct cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and a founder of Open Exchange (OPNX), a cryptocurrency exchange.

References

  1. ↑ Levi, Ryan. "Alcatraz Displays Irrational Numbers & Irrationally Long Prison Sentences". NPR: KQED.
  2. 1 2 3 O'Shaughnessy, Tracy. "Connecting the dots". UVA Magazine .
  3. 1 2 3 4 Mastroianni, Brian (26 May 2015). "Perfect equation Nelson Saiers combines math and art". Fox News . Retrieved 14 September 2021.
  4. 1 2 Wojcik, Natalie (15 November 2017). "This former Wall Street tycoon gave up his paycheck for a paintbrush". CNBC .
  5. ↑ Creswell, Julie (March 17, 2011). "Funds Find Opportunities in Volatility". New York Times. Retrieved January 31, 2013.
  6. ↑ Nelson Saiers at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  7. 1 2 3 Kearns, Jeff (15 July 2010). "Deutsche Bank Loses Option Trader Saiers to Hedge Fund Alphabet Management". Bloomberg News . Retrieved 21 February 2013.
  8. ↑ Kearns, Jeff (March 15, 2011). "Alphabet Promotes Saiers to Investment Chief of Volatility Fund". Bloomberg News . Retrieved January 31, 2013.
  9. ↑ "Saiers Rising, Becomes CIO of Hedge Fund Alphabet". FINAlternatives. 16 March 2011. Retrieved 21 February 2013.
  10. ↑ Hiralal, Baz (23 February 2012). "Movers and Shakers". The Deal Pipeline. Archived from the original on 14 June 2012. Retrieved 21 February 2013.
  11. ↑ Gammeltoft, Nikolaj (December 7, 2012). "Saiers Made Partner at Alphabet Management After 27% Gain". Bloomberg News . Retrieved January 31, 2013.
  12. 1 2 3 Dietrich, Chris (April 2, 2016). "A Hedge Funder's Merger of Aesthetics and Math". Barron's .
  13. 1 2 Garrison, Mark (June 6, 2016). "A former hedge fund manager turns complex financial issues into art". Marketplace . Retrieved September 15, 2021.
  14. ↑ "Harvard". nelsonsaiers.com.
  15. 1 2 Levi, Ryan. "Alcatraz Displays Irrational Numbers & Irrationally Long Prison Sentences". KQED .
  16. 1 2 Vioien, Guelda (2016-04-21). "The Warhol of Wall Street". The New York Observer .
  17. ↑ Kelleher, Kevin. "Why Someone Put a Giant, Inflatable Bitcoin Rat on Wall Street, Facing the Federal Reserve Bank". Fortune. Fortune Magazine.
  18. ↑ Noto, Anthony (October 12, 2018). "Bitcoin review: Crypto hacking gets worse, UAE plans new ICO rules". New York Business Journal.
  19. ↑ kazakina, katya (11 February 2022). "Inflation in the U.S. Is Higher Than It's Been in Four Decades. Here's Why That's Good News for Art Sellers". artnet.com-. artnet.
  20. ↑ "Nelson Saiers Calls Cheap On The FED With New Sculpture". business insider.
  21. ↑ "Shortening on Alcatraz by Nelson Saiers". Parksconservancy.org. Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. 24 February 2018.
  22. ↑ Graver, David (28 September 2016). "Nelson Saiers' "Shortening: Making Irrational Rational" at Alcatraz". Coolhunting.com.
  23. ↑ Andrew, david (31 January 2017). "Unnecessary Roughness: Alcatraz Exhibit Challenges Prison System—With Football Jerseys". Hoodline.
  24. ↑ Gammeltoft, Nikolaj (7 October 2013). "Hedge-Fund Manager Saiers Offers Banksy $100,000 for Sandy Help". Bloomberg News . Retrieved 8 October 2013.
  25. ↑ Stone, Madeline (October 29, 2013). "Hedge Fund Manager Donates $100,000 To Hurricane Sandy Relief Without Banksy's Help". Business Insider . Retrieved September 15, 2021.
  26. ↑ "Charity:water. Annual report" (PDF). Charity:water.
  27. ↑ Bit, Kelly (7 June 2011). "Alphabet Management's Saiers on the Return of Volatility". Bloomberg.
  28. ↑ K., Dea. "Nelson Saiers". Widewalls.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.