I have to say, the first time I read about Renaissance I felt sadness at the thought that this much ability and such resources were put into essentially making money out of thin air, with very limited (if any) social benefits.
I can't escape the feeling that the world would be a better place if maths and physics phd's would get to live a good life doing maths and physics, rather than being lured into quant finance.
Renaissance Technologies
101–110 of 261 posts
Re: Renaissance Technologies
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Due to zero-sum game Wealth is not zero-sum, it's created. Real GDP (i.e. adjusted for inflation) in the world has increased from ~$3.4T to ~$110T since the 1900s.
Yeah, but what does that have to do with trading? When you create something that physically benefits people/the world, you usually extract your own value (profit) by providing even more value and selling it. When you trade like this, what net value are you providing? It seems like they are just extracting value.
Also, if all the smart minds were doing advanced trading in 1900, would the GDP have risen as much? Instead people were creating aircraft, fighting disease, creating the internet, etc.
Re: Renaissance Technologies
#103The tone of many comments here is disappointing. I'm really surprised at the number of people suggesting illegal activity. Why is it so hard to accept that someone did the math?
I should add that Renaissance Technologies is hiring!
https://www.rentec.com/Careers.action
My group is looking for very strong Java/Kotlin developers.
Re: Renaissance Technologies
#104The tone of many comments here is disappointing. I'm really surprised at the number of people suggesting illegal activity. Why is it so hard to accept that someone did the math?
What’s hard to believe is the immense success, something on the order of 70% annual returns for a couple of decades, the secrecy, and the fact that it’s size is capped. That and the convenient smokescreen of “they did the math,” and the fact that nobody else, given the immense incentive to do so, has matched their “math.” I don’t know if it’s illegal, but my gut says that if it isn’t, it would be if people knew about it.
Re: Renaissance Technologies
#105Someone'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.
TGS is comparable to Medallion. The two have competed for talent in the past, and TGS actually spreads higher AUM over fewer people. TGS just doesn't have satellite funds, so they're quieter.
Re: Renaissance Technologies
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
There would be no disbursements from one fund to the other. Fund A would purchase an asset slowly over time. When it has finished purchasing the asset, fund B would purchase that asset quickly at a scale large enough to increase the market price of it. As the price rose, fund A would sell its position. The net effect is that fund A sees increased returns and fund B sees decreased returns.
This is throwing any efficient-market hypothesis out the window. Msybe this would work for a year, but why would anyone invest in fund B if it is a consistent loser. If you can figure out a way to slowly buy an asset and then quickly buy more of it and make both strategies profitable at all, then you're onto something huge. Almost as huge as Ren Tech
Re: Renaissance Technologies
#107I have to say, the first time I read about Renaissance I felt sadness at the thought that this much ability and such resources were put into essentially making money out of thin air, with very limited (if any) social benefits. I can't escape the feeling that the world would be a better place if maths and physics phd's would get to live a good life doing maths and physics, rather than being lured into quant finance.
How do you feel about them working on nuclear bombs & working for the NSA? Cause for many years that was the standard way to live tr good life.
Re: Renaissance Technologies
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every five - 10 years the up to date track record is provided to reputable third parties to curate publicity. For example, Bloomberg and WSJ. Generally speaking though, most firms with a track record like RenTech's prefer to keep it quiet because they don't solicit outside investment. In particular: RenTech likes to keep a handle on this publicity for the purposes of courting extremely good talent from academia and i…
Medallion also had a few external investors until 2010ish, who could be a source for some of the numbers. IIRC, Bill Ziemba published their returns in the mid 2000s sometime. Also, what Princeton Alpha offshoots? IIRC, Princeton Alpha was a PDT spinoff that closed due to poor performance. Maybe you mean Princeton/Newport offshoots?
He probably means tgs and co
Re: Renaissance Technologies
#109Earlier 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.
It’s perfectly reasonable to think that whatever strategies they are using are being shielded from scrutiny at least in part because of a concern that it would be regulated out of existence, i.e., made illegal, if public. That’s just good capitalism there.
Re: Renaissance Technologies
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Medallion also had a few external investors until 2010ish, who could be a source for some of the numbers. IIRC, Bill Ziemba published their returns in the mid 2000s sometime. Also, what Princeton Alpha offshoots? IIRC, Princeton Alpha was a PDT spinoff that closed due to poor performance. Maybe you mean Princeton/Newport offshoots?
Yes, I meant Newport. The Thorpe folks and such.
Just out of curiosity, are there any successful Princeton/Newport/Thorpe offshoots aside from the usual one in Irvine?