Renaissance Technologies

[jwblue]

Does anyone have any opinion of them and their funds?

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

https://www.renfund.com/vm/locations.vm

[nisiprius]

I don't have enough money to be a client of theirs, so I don't need to have an opinion of them. I think you need to be an "accredited" investor and have $10 million you can afford to risk--something in that ballpark.

You can read a lot about them in The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It, by Scott Patterson. I read the book but I've forgotten what I read--that is, I've forgotten which of them blew up when. Maybe Renaissance was the one that hasn't blown up yet?

As with all hedge funds, I like to think those grapes are sour anyway. Eugene Fama famously said of them, "If you want to invest in something where they steal your money and don’t tell you what they’re doing, be my guest."

[epimedium]

They are an interesting company running hedge funds with quant/HFT strategies. Not your usual Boglehead stuff. I have no idea of what the minimum investments are.

[AndrewS]

Kinda interesting to see who is part of it. Didn't know that George Zweig, one of guys who postulated the existence of quarks, is part of Renaissance.

"Reid W. Barton (born May 6, 1983) is one of the most successful performers in the International Science Olympiads.[1][2] "

I guess this is where our best and brightest end up these days.

[Grt2bOutdoors]

Does anyone have any opinion of them and their funds?

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

https://www.renfund.com/vm/locations.vm

Yes - they made the founder "Simon" a fantastically rich billonaire. Other than that, unless their investors have become equally successful and I imagine if that was so, we would have heard about it, it is far better to keep your money in your pocket as opposed to theirs.

[Valuethinker]

A book like Sebastian Mallaby's 'More Money than God' will take you through them.

They have an extraordinary record, likely arbitraging a market imperfection that academics have not discovered yet. So far, no sign of the usual 'fat tail' risk that most hedge fund strategies show (ie see Andrew Lo 'Capital Decimation Partners''-- a strategy that makes steady small returns each year but a whopping wipe out every so many years, allowing the managers a good living, but destroying investors' capital completely).

What we do know is that most of the original scientists published in the field of computer speech recognition-- so statistical patterns in (quasi random) noise.

Amazingly no one has ever left taking the secret with them. A bit Omerta, that. It implies that only Simon or 1-2 people have a clear view of the totality of the software.

AFAIK most of the money they now manage is their own and/or the original investors. There's no chance that a new investor could get into one of their funds. AFAIK.

[nisiprius]

AFAIK most of the money they now manage is their own and/or the original investors. There's no chance that a new investor could get into one of their funds. AFAIK.

Google finds me this:

Renaissance Starts First Hedge Fund in Five Years to Trade Stocks, Futures

...The new fund, the Renaissance Institutional Diversified Alpha Fund, is scheduled to open in March...

...The decision to start a new fund comes a little more than a year after Peter Brown and Robert Mercer, co-chief executive officers and former International Business Machines Corp. language-recognition specialists, took over from Simons, 73, who retired in 2010...

...Renaissance will charge investors a 1 percent management fee and a 10 percent performance fee for the new fund, about half the average rate for a hedge fund...

And this article says "The fund will be available to institutional and high-net-worth investors with a $5 million minimum investment, according to the marketing materials."

[hlfo718]

The strangest part of this place is that their most successful hedge fund is only offered to employees. So when you hear about Ren Tech, is really the Medallion fund, not the other institutional offerings. I think back in 2006/2007 they came out with a long only vehicle for institutions but bombed during the financial crisis.

So even if you have enough cash to get in, you won't be able to get into the fund that made the founder a billionaire.