Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Renaissance Technologies

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 261 posts

Re: Renaissance Technologies

#71

Post by [deleted] »

throwawaymath wrote: post #48
gibybo wrote: post #39

Note that RenTec also runs two other funds that are larger than the Medallion Fund, but both under perform the index. On a completely unrelated note, if I were interested in creating a fund that appeared to have market beating returns for decades and I wasn't concerned about the legal consequences, here's one way I might do it: I would create fund A and B and seed them with some initial capital. For fund A, I would c…

To be frank, running this sham for 30 years sounds less plausible to me than beating the market the boring way. How would you stop investors in your two public funds (and their accountants) from asking pointed questions about disbursements from one fund to the others? Do you plan to fool them for this amount of time, or bring them into the conspiracy? And how will you sustain the conspiracy when your other two funds…

[deleted]

Re: Renaissance Technologies

#72

Post by anonu »

Nobody really knows how RenTech makes their money. There have been some interesting data points over time, mainly through lawsuits where interesting tidbits of info were divulged.

There are indications that the main rentech fund is a combination of high leverage and some potentially risky tax plays through structured products.

Re: Renaissance Technologies

#73

Post by nodesocket »

xgulfie wrote: post #56
XnoiVeX wrote: post #49

So much negativity in this thread. We fear or doubt what we do not understand I guess.

You must have some nice ruby-tinted glasses to be able to put a positive spin on "secretive hedge fund with black-box trading algorithm hires scientists to makes rich people lots of money"

I think you've been drinking too much of the Warren coolaid. If you are American, vilifying wealth and building companies is quite a silly endeavour. This blame game mentality is counterproductive and will only restrict and impede your own financial success.

Re: Renaissance Technologies

#74

Post by cjken »

While I understand there are moral and ethical complications with the vast sums of wealth and influence attached to RenTec, the tone in these comments is disappointing...

There is no fraud at RenTec, and there is nothing magical about what they do. It's simply an amazing technical and scientific organization, operating with almost unthinkable efficiency and scale.

I haven't read the book, but I'm pretty sure this isn't in it: I've been told by reliable sources that if you pick any one strategy (however you are able to separate/define that) from the Medallion portfolio and it will not be individually remarkable--probably less than a 1.0 Sharpe (net of trading costs, gross of fees). There are countless hedge funds with equally performant models and sub-strategies.

What makes RenTec different is their ability to generate orthogonal strategies at a remarkable scale. They generate more ideas with less philosophical and empirical overlap than anyone else, by a wide margin. The software and theory required to do this for a fund as large as Medallion is absolutely as rare and valuable as their returns have proven.

Wrote more about it here: https://www.bridgealternatives.com/medallion-isnt-magic-prob...

Re: Renaissance Technologies

#75

Post by [deleted] »

gibybo wrote: post #39

Note that RenTec also runs two other funds that are larger than the Medallion Fund, but both under perform the index. On a completely unrelated note, if I were interested in creating a fund that appeared to have market beating returns for decades and I wasn't concerned about the legal consequences, here's one way I might do it: I would create fund A and B and seed them with some initial capital. For fund A, I would c…

[deleted]

Re: Renaissance Technologies

#76

Post by hatred »

deepnotderp wrote: post #65

Someone's going to say this eventually, so it may as well be me. Rentech is not the only hyper successful fund. There are others, like TGS management ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2014/05/09/mys... ) that are just as successful and who you've never heard of. What rentech has done is to have built an excellent data processing engine that automatically extracts signal from noise. Other, much more secr…

Think there are many others (you mentioned one of them e.g., TGS) but they are not in the same league as RenTec's medallion fund.

Re: Renaissance Technologies

#77

Post by throw_this_one »

deepnotderp wrote: post #65

Someone's going to say this eventually, so it may as well be me. Rentech is not the only hyper successful fund. There are others, like TGS management ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2014/05/09/mys... ) that are just as successful and who you've never heard of. What rentech has done is to have built an excellent data processing engine that automatically extracts signal from noise. Other, much more secr…

Very cool. Do you have any info/resources on how the signal extraction works?

Re: Renaissance Technologies

#78

Post by throw_this_one »

nodesocket wrote: post #73
xgulfie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have some nice ruby-tinted glasses to be able to put a positive spin on "secretive hedge fund with black-box trading algorithm hires scientists to makes rich people lots of money"

I think you've been drinking too much of the Warren coolaid. If you are American, vilifying wealth and building companies is quite a silly endeavour. This blame game mentality is counterproductive and will only restrict and impede your own financial success.

I mean what is the end effect of this though? Basically some smart people get very rich. Due to zero-sum game, other people lose. No benefit is derived in the real economy. The only possible benefit is increased liquidity... which really isn't that beneficial past a point right? I don't see the benefit. If you have a different angle I'd be glad to hear it.

Re: Renaissance Technologies

#79

Post by deepnotderp »

throw_this_one wrote: post #77
deepnotderp wrote: post #65

Someone's going to say this eventually, so it may as well be me. Rentech is not the only hyper successful fund. There are others, like TGS management ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2014/05/09/mys... ) that are just as successful and who you've never heard of. What rentech has done is to have built an excellent data processing engine that automatically extracts signal from noise. Other, much more secr…

Very cool. Do you have any info/resources on how the signal extraction works?

Signal processing, information geometry and information theory mostly. You can read the papers rentech authors publish before they leave

Re: Renaissance Technologies

#80

Post by sjg007 »

I dunno, I would take reliable weather reports a year out and try to predict crop prices. I am assuming demand will be linear. Maybe you can do this within the US, maybe not.
Post reply on HN