Medallion fund: a remarkably successful quant trading firm built by scientists

Posted by moh_maya on Monday November 21, 2016 @04:11AM
from the bloomberg.com dept.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-21/how-renaissance-s-medallion-fund-became-finance-s-blackest-box

( 8 comments | 75 points | on HN )

Re:Medallion fund: a remarkably successful quant trading fir... by applecore on Monday November 21, 2016 @10:26AM (#13006034)

> Eventually the scientists went so far as to develop an in-house programming language for their models rather than settle for a numbercentric option such as ASCII, which was popular at the time.

I have fond memories of the late 1980s. The ASCII programming language was very popular at the time.

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Re:Medallion fund: a remarkably successful quant trading fir... by Something1234 on Monday November 21, 2016 @03:59PM (#13009158)

Is this sarcasm? I can't find any reference to an ASCII programming language.

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Re:Medallion fund: a remarkably successful quant trading fir... by fanzhang on Monday November 21, 2016 @04:06PM (#13009211)

Yes.

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Re:Medallion fund: a remarkably successful quant trading fir... by Maven911 on Monday November 21, 2016 @01:11PM (#13007535)

All these funds have some commonalities: highly statistical in nature, high probability trades, correlations, algorithms executing trades. But finding out any of the internals of these funds is next to impossible unless one has an "in".

Does anyone on HN have some perspective on how these funds operate (renaissance, AQR funds etc.) ?

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Re:Medallion fund: a remarkably successful quant trading fir... by qwrusz on Monday November 21, 2016 @09:02PM (#13011023)

I can't offer too much insight, sorry. But I will say the "quant" fund label is very broad. RenTec and AQR both hire PhDs and use computers to trade, but AQR offers mutual funds with daily liquidity and they publicly disclose much more info - RenTec as a private fund has more flexibility in what it can do. Correspondingly, how a fund uses risk and takes on leverage can make a big difference.

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Re:Medallion fund: a remarkably successful quant trading fir... by vfulco on Monday November 21, 2016 @11:20PM (#13011601)

Why even write an article like this? Bored journalist around the holidays or great stealth advertising for their "open" institutional funds?

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Re:Medallion fund: a remarkably successful quant trading fir... by cpymchn on Tuesday November 22, 2016 @11:03AM (#13014945)

@vfulco Medallion is germane now for a reason the article doesn't mention:

Robert Mercer is the primary benefactor behind Breitbart. He was the number three donor to conservative causes this election cycle (behind Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer).

The money coming out of Medallion helped put Trump in 1600.

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Re:Medallion fund: a remarkably successful quant trading fir... by SonicSoul on Sunday November 27, 2016 @10:56AM (#13049746)

thanks for pointing this out! any idea why ultra rich would want alt-right to succeed? isn't alt-right kind of about de-stabilizing the system which could screw with their money?

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