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elan
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Joined: April 30th, 2003, 3:47 pm

Renaissance technology

October 9th, 2003, 11:11 am

QuoteOriginally posted by: secondMananyone knowing about bnp cooper neff? they stopped writing their "inisights" more than a year ago. indicates trouble to me.peaceCooper and Neff left the firm some time ago, the last I heard was that they were running a venture capital company (called "Gamma" or something like this). BNP Cooper Neff is run by Andrew Sterge. I believe they got integrated within the NYC operation of BNP Paribas.
 
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TraderJoe
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Joined: February 1st, 2005, 11:21 pm

Renaissance technology

September 28th, 2007, 9:52 pm

QuoteRenaissance raising new fund to trade futuresWed Sep 5, 2007 11:31am ETNEW YORK, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Renaissance Technologies Corp. is raising its third quantitative hedge fund, this one specializing in trading futures and designed to handle up to $50 billion, a source familiar with matter said.Renaissance, which is managed by mathematics professor-turned-financier James Simons, recently began sending out offering documents for the fund, the source said.Long Island, New York-based Renaissance, which industry publication Alpha Magazine listed as the world's sixth-largest hedge fund group as of May 2007, continues to raise money for its second fund, the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund (RIEF), which is now over $26 billion.Its first fund, Medallion, which has about $6 billion, has been one of the most successful funds in the hedge fund world, but is closed to new investors.Renaissance declined to comment. Private investment firms like hedge funds are barred by regulators from discussing fundraisings in the media on the view that this may entice ordinary people to invest in what are considered risky vehicles for sophisticated investors. News of the fundraising was reported by the Financial Times on Wednesday.The fundraising comes at a time when many "quant" funds, which employ rapid-fire trading methods using computer driven models, took big hits during the market gyrations of the last month in particular.Now some have recovered at least some lost territory as they reconfigured their models. The RIEF fund, which was down almost 9 percent by mid-August, bounced back and is now up about a half percent for August, the source said. Final figures aren't in yet.It is all but clear whether investors will pony up $50 billion for the new fund, which would make it by far the world's biggest hedge fund.In its offering documents, Renaissance said its RIEF fund was designed to handle up to $100 billion, but the fund is so far nowhere near that size and it is not clear whether it ever will be.
 
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valmont
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Joined: August 29th, 2007, 4:13 am

Renaissance technology

October 1st, 2007, 6:38 pm

It seems that derivatives are definitely the new frontier for hedge funds these days. This is particularly true in the commodity derivatives sector. I just read this morning that Oceanic is also launching a derivatives fund, this one based around commodity derivatives. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21070283/
 
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tags
Posts: 3162
Joined: February 21st, 2010, 12:58 pm

Re: Renaissance technology

September 3rd, 2021, 7:05 am

James Simons, Robert Mercer, Others at Renaissance to Pay Up to $7 Billion to Settle Tax Probe

in their defence, they are not the only crooks who are hailed as geniuses.
 
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bearish
Posts: 5188
Joined: February 3rd, 2011, 2:19 pm

Re: Renaissance technology

September 3rd, 2021, 1:23 pm

Couldn’t happen to nicer people.
 
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katastrofa
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Joined: August 16th, 2007, 5:36 am
Location: Alpha Centauri

Re: Renaissance technology

September 5th, 2021, 9:06 am

Ran out of luck?
Simons had Chern for PhD advisor, the father of differential topology and geometry. He gave physicists fancy tools to cut our fingers :-)
IMHO it's meaningful that the theory is "Chern-Simons", not "Simons-Chern". Usually the student's contribution is overstated :-)
 
leptoq
Posts: 361
Joined: February 15th, 2018, 4:42 pm

Re: Renaissance technology

September 5th, 2021, 2:31 pm

James Simons, Robert Mercer, Others at Renaissance to Pay Up to $7 Billion to Settle Tax Probe

in their defence, they are not the only crooks who are hailed as geniuses.
I'm curious if anyone followed the details of their TAX evasion scheme. The trick to transform short term gains into long term gains using options was discovered by IRS many years ago. Did they figure out something more intelligent?
 
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Alan
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Re: Renaissance technology

September 5th, 2021, 3:09 pm

James Simons, Robert Mercer, Others at Renaissance to Pay Up to $7 Billion to Settle Tax Probe

in their defence, they are not the only crooks who are hailed as geniuses.
I'm curious if anyone followed the details of their TAX evasion scheme. The trick to transform short term gains into long term gains using options was discovered by IRS many years ago. Did they figure out something more intelligent?

Sen. Levin's opening statement explains it well  -- essentially a sham contract with the custody banks aggregating/relabeling their short-term gains as 'yearly' gains. 'Basket options' was a smokescreen label.
 
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katastrofa
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Location: Alpha Centauri

Re: Renaissance technology

September 5th, 2021, 7:07 pm

Couldn’t happen to nicer people.
Can also I not pay taxes if I'm nice?
Image
 
leptoq
Posts: 361
Joined: February 15th, 2018, 4:42 pm

Re: Renaissance technology

September 6th, 2021, 8:49 pm

James Simons, Robert Mercer, Others at Renaissance to Pay Up to $7 Billion to Settle Tax Probe

in their defence, they are not the only crooks who are hailed as geniuses.
I'm curious if anyone followed the details of their TAX evasion scheme. The trick to transform short term gains into long term gains using options was discovered by IRS many years ago. Did they figure out something more intelligent?

Sen. Levin's opening statement explains it well  -- essentially a sham contract with the custody banks aggregating/relabeling their short-term gains as 'yearly' gains. 'Basket options' was a smokescreen label.
Thank you, Alan. This is quite amusing read. It sounds like Rentec took huge risks even trying to do that. Even on the surface the created basket options looked like the structures designed to avoid paying taxes on short term gains
 
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snowde
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Joined: December 14th, 2021, 4:15 pm

Re: Renaissance technology

December 16th, 2021, 11:13 am

Professor Bradford Cornell wrote about the 'impossibility' of RenTech's success here, saying that "Over the period from the start of trading in 1988 to 2018, $100 invested in Medallion would have grown to $398.7 million, representing a compound return of 63.3%." and "to date, there is no adequate rational market explanation for this performance."
 
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kc11415
Posts: 72
Joined: March 16th, 2003, 10:02 pm
Location: Indiana, USA

Re: Renaissance technology

December 16th, 2021, 11:20 pm

Hmm... why is this making me think of split-strike conversions....?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_One_Would_Listen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Markopolos
I found the Harry Markopolos book to be quite engaging and well worth reading.
But then, I also find Jim Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer to also be engaging when others might not ;-/
All standard disclaimers apply, and then some.
 
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Amin
Posts: 2572
Joined: July 14th, 2002, 3:00 am

Re: Renaissance technology

December 30th, 2021, 1:54 pm

Professor Bradford Cornell wrote about the 'impossibility' of RenTech's success here, saying that "Over the period from the start of trading in 1988 to 2018, $100 invested in Medallion would have grown to $398.7 million, representing a compound return of 63.3%." and "to date, there is no adequate rational market explanation for this performance."
.
Renaissance is a market-making firm in the sense of making trade through limit orders and capitalizing on spread. I have faint memory of hearing Jim Simons' interview and I recall that he mentioned that an average trade lasted close to 20 seconds (I forgot exact number he said). They earn whole spread (on average) and make some extra on top of that(on average) due to their intelligent algorithm that predicts the direction of markets. However intelligent your market prediction algorithm is, there is no way you can make money on this scale until you earn bid-ask spread and this is the most significant part of the trade profit. On the other hand if your market prediction algorithm is weak, you would end up losing some of the bid-ask spread but still may earn some profits.
But it is certainly and exactly possible.
You think life is a secret, Life is only love of flying, It has seen many ups and downs, But it likes travel more than the destination. Allama Iqbal
 
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Amin
Posts: 2572
Joined: July 14th, 2002, 3:00 am

Re: Renaissance technology

January 21st, 2022, 11:59 am

See this thread in trading forum to get a more numerical and statistical answer. Application of Filtering Principles Towards Trading Stock Prices.
https://forum.wilmott.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=102668
You think life is a secret, Life is only love of flying, It has seen many ups and downs, But it likes travel more than the destination. Allama Iqbal
 
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tags
Posts: 3162
Joined: February 21st, 2010, 12:58 pm

Re: Renaissance technology

November 11th, 2022, 9:25 pm

We take a listener question about time series and we talk with Nick Patterson of the Broad Institute about everything from ancient DNA to Alan Turing. 

(at about 30')
[...I joined a hedged fund, Renaissance Technologies, I'll make a comment about that. It's funny that I think the most important thing to do on data analysis is to do the simple things right. So, here's a kind of non-secret about what we did at renaissance: in my opinion, our most important statistical tool was simple regression with one target and one independent variable. It's the simplest statistical model you can imagine.