You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. RenTec is the most profitable money making machine the world has ever seen (and likely will see). RenTec’s Medallion fund has an annualized return for over 30 years in excess of 35% net of fees. I’m not sure what their management fee is, but their performance fee is like 45%. This means they are making like 80% returns YoY before fees.

I suspect you don’t work in the industry, because what you’re saying is absolutely ludicrous. The S&P 500 lost like 40% in 2008. Meanwhile Medallion doubled up after fees. So a total return of 145%. What you’re saying is simply not possible with a tax loophole.

There’s not a single hedge fund analyst or PM on the Street who doesn’t think that RenTec is anything less than amazing. No one thinks they are as good as those guys, no one. If you want the real story about Simmons and RenTec, check out the MIT Sloan fireside chat with him on YouTube.

I'm not in the industry, but I wonder: did people have the same kind of reverence for Madoff?

Madoff was a ponzi scheme that relied on new investment (since it was simple pyramid). Medallion fund limits outside investment (so there is no outside source of money) and has operated for many decades (ie more money was withdrawn from it than put in).

I know nothing of Medallion, but I'm curious if only private insiders can invest, how do you know they're not just lying about how much they return?

Such returns would not be possible if they grew to a certain size. By closing the fund, they can keep it small enough to limit scaling issues.

That's illogical because people don't get paid in ROI. They get paid in absolute dollars. Earning a 30% ROI on 200 billion dollars is better than earning a 30% ROI on 100 billion dollars.

My point is that once a fund grows to a certain size, ROI at that scale becomes impossible. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some of their funds have investment restrictions and mandatory distributions.

But they do have other funds. It's simply they want to keep their money in higher return fund and other people's money in the bigger, lower return fund.

It allows family and former employees, so it is actually A LOT of people. Kind of hard to keep a conspiracy with 100+ people for 30+ years. Why would all these people lie?

All the family, employees, and former employees have a maximum investment. Every year they withdraw funds so that the principle never exceeds a certain threshold.

You can't just conjure a 45% ROI out of nothing.

It either means inflation is incredibly high, productivity growth is incredibly high, there is some exotic "dark market" that most investors cannot access (probably made out of dark matter) or other people are losing a lot of money.

Except inflation isn't high, productivity growth isn't high and I just made up the "dark market" so only one explanation remains.

Like they’re very very good at what they do? Simmons is a genius ans the people that work st RenTec are some of the best and brightest minds in the world.

Even so, I must admit, their profability and success is outstanding. But then again, so are Apple’s and Google’s. The only difference is thst no one knows how RenTec makes buttloads of money.

This is another reason individual day traders lose - it's a zero sum game and in liquid markets you are competing against outfits like RenTec.

Beta (by definition) is not a zero sum game, but alpha is.

> Renaissance Technologies did not use algorithms to beat the market...

This is false. RenTec generated outsized returns for a decade prior to entering into the derivatives with Barclays and DB beginning in 2000.

> the bulk of their profits beyond what would have been made just investing in an index fund

This is also false. For example, RenTec generated 99% return in 2000 net of fees, while the S&P 500 lost ~8%.

From what has been published, secrecy within Renaissance is so extreme that perhaps only 2-3 people actually know what is going on. So for an outsider, I say it's pure speculation.

And I speculate that their outsized gains are due to market manipulation, front running, or other insider activities (as in, illegal/unfair).

No one is smart enough; no algorithm or model is future-proof; nobody gets returns like this unless they define the scenarios themselves.

> their outsized gains are due to market manipulation, front running, or other insider activities (as in, illegal/unfair).

as a former insider at a different, less successful-than-rentec-but-still-successful firm, I doubt it. They have better data, technology, and employees than most other market participants. So then the question is how did they get there:

> No one is smart enough; no algorithm or model is future-proof

I agree with the sentiment, but the way it worked was in the early days, it was much easier for one person or a small team to get those advantages. Then, as the market matured and simple algorithms became less profitable, they made new, more complex ones. It became harder for new entrants to jump-start the whole process from scratch. Simons started rentech in 1982. Teleport that Simons to today and his fund probably wouldn't even get off the ground. He would still be a genius, but a billionaire? I don't think so. As you say, no one is smart enough. It was right place/right time, and they built on their advantages.

Question since you are informed about them and the space...

I had read this[1] and seen some other things about his activities.

Since Mercer and his family seem deeply wrapped up in something that has some worrying ties to hostile foreign nations, a company who has been recorded saying they've done REALLY shady things along those lines, etc...

How feasible is it that RenTech used similar technology and god knows what data to directly impact the geopolitical landscape, and traded off of that? If you can for example...create major disturbances in certain areas, or draw certain attention to various things at a certain scale, could that impact markets?

I want to clarify that I know absolutely nothing about the regulations and mechanisms in place to catch such a thing with the SEC, etc., and don't want this to come off as a conspiracy theory. It's just...with what's come out so far the conspiracy is kind of writing itself, so I wouldn't be surprised if something like this were at play.

[1] https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b17q91wjnnr68x...

It is feasible, although I would be surprised if it something like this were at play. For one thing the other CEO Brown and Simons himself are on the opposite side of the political spectrum. That's not any guarantee but my point is that these organizations aren't monolithic...if there were geopolitical impacts hopefully someone would leak. But even if rentech were completely amoral, they probably still wouldn't do it just because the risk/reward asymmetry is too great. Sounds like it'd fall more to the FBI than SEC; much higher penalties. Too much of the rest of the business is profitable. These people have a lot to lose. And when hedge funds engage in bad behavior, it tends to look more like this [1]. Perfectly legal, yet still harming society, in my (less informed) opinion.

What keeps me up at night is not rentech but state actors, like you said, hostile foreign nations. They have the resources to pull it off and plenty of motivation...trading profits would just be icing on the cake, really.

Here's an amateur-level manipulation example you may find interesting [2]. Could rentech do this more subtly with 10x impact? Like I was saying, it may be feasible...still kinda doubt it. If this happens my guess it would be a fund that was no longer profitable, on it's way out, they have nothing left to lose, all this computing power laying around...

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-27/windst...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-21/german-so...

> So for an outsider, I say it's pure speculation.

And you assert this on what basis? There's enough that's been published to get some broad idea of what happens within the firm.

> And I speculate that their outsized gains are due to market manipulation, front running, or other insider activities (as in, illegal/unfair).

If they were engaging in illegal activities, it's very likely the firm, which is undoubtedly scrutinized by regulators, any such activities would have been discovered.

> No one is smart enough; no algorithm or model is future-proof; nobody gets returns like this unless they define the scenarios themselves.

RenTech constantly updates its algorithms. Alpha decay is a well known phenomenon. The firm utilizes sophisticated risk management techniques in order to avoid drawdowns, in all likelihood. Assuming this is the case, they're able to more effectively compound returns while simultaneously levering positions. Here's an example of a risk parity strategy [0], which may help explain how risk management works.

[0] https://towardsdatascience.com/ray-dalio-etf-900edfe64b05?_b...

There was a video interview with the founder where he explained pretty much how they do it. The employ a lot of bright PhD maths/physics types, get them to come up with all the algorithmic strategies they can think of, run tests with historic data and live trading to see which ones work and then scale up those.

There isn't one smart guy or one great strategy - there are dozens of smart guys and loads of strategies and they can win because they outsmart the city types.

That sounds too much like this:

https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Manageme...

As I remember, beaucoup back testing, hilarity ensues anyway.

The issue with LTCM wasn't just that they didn't test sufficiently - the problem is that traders could take positions without supervision and any accountability. My understanding is that any firms that survived that period (and I believe they were all pulling the same shenanigans as LTCM, just maybe to a lesser degree) now have risk management because unlike Lehman/Bear they can't just foist that risk off onto the public market. No one at the head of a multi-billion dollar hedge fund wants to stop being there if all they have to do to endure is pay for risk management.

*edit: I'm not a serious student of this aspect, but I recall that none of the top independent hedge funds took a bath in the 2007+ collapse (that is, those that weren't in-house funds from a major wall st. company). They all had their risk management in order and all did pretty well in buying distressed assets. Some like Bridgewater really managed to grow non-stop right through that.

As I remember the book, they back tested quite a lot. It's just that whenever they went live with trading reality changed on 'em. Go figure.

They were exposed to a margin call. Trading reality changing or no, if you can get taken out by your prime broker at the end of the day, you need to account for that too and they didn't.

One thing backtesting misses is the other market participants may see what you are up to in live trading and try to take advantage. That was a big factor with LTCM.

They could lie about that too and just use linear regression.

A linear model on a heretofore unknown predictor is basically how all hedge funds make money.

Coming up with the predictor is often the hard part. For example, take the tweets of a (sane) president and run sentiment analysis on it. If it is positively correlated with mentioning an equity, the sentiment of the tweet might be a good linear predictor of the stock price.

The math is simple once the feature is well defined.

Feature development is the current frontier, as I understand it.

That's my point. They hire the smart people so they can really abuse the simple stuff.

No mention of leverage?

I'd take leverage for granted but it only works if the underlying bet you are leveraging is in your favour.

The article says that this scheme occurred during specific years.

During the 1990’s they also beat the market.

“Medallion, which is open only to current and former Renaissance employees, has generated returns of about 40 percent after fees for decades by using computers to spot market patterns. It’s distinct from the funds Renaissance makes available to outsiders, such as the Institutional Equities Fund.

Medallion earns most of its money through short-term trading of securities and other assets. Such earnings typically get taxed at the same marginal rate as salary. The tax code rewards longer-term investments with a preferential, lower rate.

The dispute centers on transactions the firm carried out with Barclays Plc and Deutsche Bank AG between 2000 and 2015 that had the effect of transforming short-term trading gains into long-term returns. Rather than own securities directly, Renaissance instructed the banks to buy and sell them within a portfolio of assets. It then bought an option from the banks tied to the portfolio’s performance”

I’m confused. Doesn’t the recipient pay these taxes, so it wouldn’t show up when comparing fund returns?

I'm not a finance guy, but I think the idea is this:

Ren says "we bought an option and held it for a year". The option's counterparty was a bank, I guess, so they just form a company to hold the bag, and the company that is created reports to the IRS that they don't have any assets, just a basket of assets to offset the option they're responsible for.

At the end of the contract (and there can be more than one of these going on at the same time) the assets can be sold, and would be sold, in order to pay for the option contract which was now held for a year. Some money would go to the broker for executing the trades over time, etc. but much less than the taxes that would otherwise be paid.

So, the part that has the tax man scratching his head is that if Ren was directing the buying and selling of the assets in the basket constantly, is that really holding on to an asset, or is it just a lie? They say they got a tax lawyer to sign off on it, so it goes to court to see if it's a defensible position. If not, they'll probably pay a slap on the wrist and won't get to do it again.

It's not done in isolation IIRC. This sounds a lot like how I understand swaps are done, so it may be that this is only slightly unusual.

> When you factor in the money they saved from dodging taxes and how they managed to compound the growth on that money, their returns end up being no more impressive than any other hedge fund.

That's a bold claim that you should be prepared to defend. If not, you should remove it.

you've been rightfully skewered by other people but I just want to point that this is what happens when someone reads one article about a controversial thing they don't otherwise know anything about and then goes around presenting that finding as if they're some kind of expert.