Renaissance Technologies

> here's no outside investors in the Medallion fund anymore, so if it is a scam, they would only be scamming their own employees

The "it's a scam" theory that I heard had nothing to do with it being a Ponzi scheme, instead it was about laundering high-tax income into low-tax capital gains while maintaining a plausibly deniable investment cover story. It didn't have to beat the market, it just had to beat regulators.

I have nowhere near enough domain competence to comment on the plausibility of that scenario, other than to say that I suspect if it were that easy everyone would be doing it, so on those grounds alone I suspect the conspiracy theory I heard was incorrect. Someone more invested in the idea that it's a conspiracy would likely just argue that it isn't easy to be good at this or that there are economies of scale, so only one dominant player. Shrug.

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 industry. That's the only reason the Medallion returns are ever intentionally publicized. Anyone investing in RenTech's other funds knows full well they're not getting the alpha powering Medallion's returns.

Simons would probably have preferred to stay entirely under the radar, but the cat's out of the bag already and has been for decades. The most successful hedge funds (like the Princeton Alpha offshoots) don't court publicity because they don't need to pool risk with outside investors. They're not even hedge funds in the common sense of the term; they're proprietary trading firms run on employee and partner capital. Medallion can be thought of a prop shop within a hedge fund in that way.

I’m not a bot but I am always posting relevant and recent (2017) New Yorker articles that are worth reading:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/jim-simons-the...

And this interesting theme:

> Foundations are not taxed, so much of the money that supports them is money that otherwise would have gone to the government. Scientific mega-donors answer to no one but themselves. Private institutes tend to have boards chosen by their founders, and are designed to further the founders’ wishes, even beyond their deaths. Rob Reich, a professor of political science at Stanford University and an expert on philanthropy, told me, “Private foundations are a plutocratic exercise of power that’s unaccountable, nontransparent, donor-directed, and generously tax-subsidized. This seems like a very peculiar institutional and organizational form to champion in a democratic society.”

Yes table in article and cropped here on Twitter, which might have spurred this post: https://twitter.com/justindross/status/1193737152997183488?s...

Their returns have been as good or better in the last 10 years even after doubling the fund size

They are being sued for back taxes to the tune of $6.8 billion. So this may not be as legit as it seems.