Nelson Saiers is an American
mathematical artist and former
hedge fund
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as s ...
manager. Before 2014, he worked in finance as a Managing Director at
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
AG and as the
Chief Investment Officer The chief investment officer (CIO) is a job title for the board level head of investments within an organization. The CIO's purpose is to understand, manage, and monitor their organization's portfolio of assets, devise strategies for growth, act as ...
at Saiers Capital, LLC (formerly Alphabet Management, LLC). In 2014, Saiers left finance to create mathematics-based art.
Early life and education
Nelson Saiers was born in
Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
, Colorado.
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
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 b ...
.
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
Haile Selassie I ( gez, ቀዳማዊ ኀይለ ሥላሴ, Qädamawi Häylä Səllasé, ; born Tafari Makonnen; 23 July 189227 August 1975) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia (' ...
.
Saiers lived in Afghanistan during the
Saur Revolution.
Saiers' family relocated to
Swaziland and Ghana before eventually moving to Virginia.
In 1997, Saiers graduated from the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
.
In 1998, he received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Virginia at the age of 23. His thesis, ''Involutions Fixing Products of Projective Spaces'', was in
algebraic topology
Algebraic topology is a branch of mathematics that uses tools from abstract algebra to study topological spaces. The basic goal is to find algebraic invariants that classify topological spaces up to homeomorphism, though usually most classify ...
and was advised by
Robert Evert Stong.
Financial career
Saiers began his trading career at
Susquehanna International Group. He also later worked at
UBS and
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
.
At Deutsche Bank, Nelson was a Managing Director and ran a
proprietary trading
Proprietary trading (also known as prop trading) occurs when a trader trades stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, their derivatives, or other financial instruments with the firm's own money (instead of using depositors' money) in order to m ...
business focused on
derivatives.
In July 2010, Saiers left Deutsche Bank to join Alphabet Management, a New York
hedge fund
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as s ...
specializing in derivatives.
He was promoted to
Chief Investment Officer The chief investment officer (CIO) is a job title for the board level head of investments within an organization. The CIO's purpose is to understand, manage, and monitor their organization's portfolio of assets, devise strategies for growth, act as ...
in March 2011. Saiers' younger brother Scott also joined Alphabet in February 2012 as Head Trader.
In December 2012, Alphabet announced that the firm would change its name to Saiers Capital, LLC. ''
Barron's Barron's or Barrons may refer to:
*Barron's Educational Series, a publisher of books, as well as college entrance exam preparation classes and materials, now an imprint of Kaplan Test Prep
** B.E.S. Publishing, the former owner of Barron's
* ''Barr ...
'' described Saiers as having been a "star quant".
Art career
In 2014, Saiers left finance to create
mathematics-based art.
Saiers' art has been featured in solo shows at
Harvard University's Leverett House,
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary
United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, also known simply as Alcatraz (, ''"the gannet"'') or The Rock was a maximum security federal prison on Alcatraz Island, off the coast of San Francisco, California, United States, the site of a ...
,
and multiple New York City galleries.
Saiers also installed a 9-foot inflatable rat covered with
bitcoin references and code in front of the
Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...
as a homage to
Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakam ...
and protests in New York City. 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
''Charging Bull'', sometimes referred to as the ''Bull of Wall Street'' or the ''Bowling Green Bull'', is a bronze sculpture that stands on Broadway just north of Bowling Green in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. The br ...
. 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.
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." Saiers told
KQED about the exhibit, "Pi is what's called an
irrational number
In mathematics, the irrational numbers (from in- prefix assimilated to ir- (negative prefix, privative) + rational) are all the real numbers that are not rational numbers. That is, irrational numbers cannot be expressed as the ratio of two inte ...
, which means it never ends nor repeats
..Now the way to turn it into a
rational number
In mathematics, a rational number is a number that can be expressed as the quotient or fraction of two integers, a numerator and a non-zero denominator . For example, is a rational number, as is every integer (e.g. ). The set of all rat ...
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.
The exhibit's jerseys hanging on a hemp clothesline also made reference to the phrase "hung out to dry" and the abandonment of inmates.
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.
Saiers' large scale sculpture, called "Arbitrage" placed a black graffitied
Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German (meaning "beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, ...
in
Chelsea, Manhattan
Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The area's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, the Hudson River and West Street to the west, and Sixth Avenue to the east, with its northe ...
in reference to the 2008 Volkswagen
short squeeze
In the stock market, a short squeeze is a rapid increase in the price of a stock owing primarily to an excess of short selling of a stock rather than underlying fundamentals. A short squeeze occurs when there is a lack of supply and an excess of ...
leading to it briefly becoming the largest company in the world by market value.
Philanthropy
In October 2013, during the graffiti artist
Banksy
Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive epigram ...
's month-long New York project "Better Out Than In", Saiers made a public offer to donate $100,000 to the
Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy (unofficially referred to as ''Superstorm Sandy'') was an extremely destructive and strong Atlantic hurricane, as well as the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter, with tropical-storm-force winds spann ...
rebuilding effort if Banksy created a legal mural in New York to raise awareness for people still affected by the storm. 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.
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.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saiers, Nelson
Living people
American investors
Year of birth missing (living people)
American financial businesspeople
Chief investment officers
University of Virginia alumni
Mathematical artists
American hedge fund managers
Artists from Denver