droshelovich

Bullseye.

In this case, "Non-GAAP" means an earnings/revenue figure that the company produced itself. Companies usually claim this reflects economic reality but keep in mind they are free to cook up whatever numbers they want. GAAP would mean figures that adhere to general accounting rules, which independent auditors help confirm.

Generally, "Non-GAAP" can mean either IFRS or Cash Basis Accounting

Basically:

GAAP - Generally Accepted Accounting Principles = the way large corporations in the US have to account for things (assets, liabilities, equity, earnings, cash flows, etc.) --> Accruals

IFRS - International Financial Reporting Standards = how European companies account for things --> Accruals

Cash Basis Accounting = the way small businesses usually account for things

Cash Basis Accounting vs. Accrual Accounting (GAAP/IFRS/etc.)

* Cash Basis --> expenses and revenues directly match cash flows, I buy a machine that lasts 5 years today and expense the whole purchase price today

* Accrual Accounting --> expenses are recorded when "incurred" and revenues when "earned", I buy a machine that lasts 5 years today and expense the purchase price over 5 years

Individual standards (IFRS/GAAP, etc.) define these soft terms: incurred, earned, assets, debt, equity, other income, etc.

To complicate matters further there is US GAAP, UK GAAP, German GAAP, etc. The tl;dr of the earlier comment is that accounting reports don't usually reflect economic realities of large corporations.

There are several companies/methodologies that significantly adjust public filings to reflect economic realities: [1] https://www.credit-suisse.com/sites/holt/en.html [2] http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/~acmack/Chapter_12_app.pdf

GAAP is basically a huge bundle of compromises between corporations and the FASB. In reality, "revenue" and "income" don't really have rigourous definitions. Quarterly figures are also often adjusted in subsequent periods. Unfortunately, many websites simply gloss over this fact and just report the stated numbers.

As far as I know, they only have to disclose to the SEC how much money they have invested in equities. Since they don't publicly state total assets under management, we can't really know how much money Renaissance manages. They could have loads more than $52b invested in debt, commodities, currencies, etc.

http://whalewisdom.com/filer/renaissance-technologies-llc

Unfortunately it's not even a "Computer Science" department, they call it "Computer Information Systems". I never even took a CIS class, I'm technically a finance major. Pretty much taught myself how to program by playing with R/C++ and doing the JH Data Science Coursera degree. Also read Paul Graham's book recently.

Nice to see Baruch mentioned on HN. I actually go to Baruch College and don't know much about him besides what's on the Wikipedia page. There's a statue of him sitting on a bench near the entrance and I can't help but wonder what he was like when I walk past it...