Do you have any information of anyone algorithmically outperforming the market enough to make them personally billionaires?

I've heard anecdotes from multiple sources that there are groups of software engineers and algorithm designers buried deep inside all the major firms that are doing just this. I know those firms manage and create hundreds of billions of dollars and I've been told that the stiffest competition is in these tiny software components of the business.

But I don't mean to sound too snarky. Sorry about that. So go ahead and try to get a job at Machine Insight or another such firm to find out what they're all about. http://www.machineinsight.com/

Algorithmic trading is actually commonplace:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_Trading_Platforms

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/23/business/trading.php?...

Typically this is not a question of "find the secret strategy and make billions!", but rather finding a good execution algorithm to break an order of $billions down into a series of smaller orders for a good average price, or finding and exploiting minute arbitrage opportunities, etc. Algorithmic trading is responsible for many billions of dollars of trades daily; I don't know offhand of particular people who have become billionaires off it, but there are definitely lots of folks who have made a lot of money.

I know there are people who trade algorithmically (I'm one of them). I just wanted evidence of one person who had made billions from it.

You've taken my comment on a personal level in that you think I'm talking about an individual. I would form a company around the idea and target investing.

How about D. E. Shaw? I'm not sure how much he's made, but it's surely quite a lot.

Fine, let me rephrase.

Or maybe people are _wasting_ way too much money to talk about it openly?