It seems that RenTech really solved the market
Otherwise, how do you explain that track record over all these years? Thinking about getting a math PhD and working there.
Anyone from Rentech chime in?
Trending Content - Hedge Fund Forum
| +39 | How much modeling do experienced HF analysts/PMs actually do? | 16 | 4h |
| +22 | Buy Side Credit - Seats / Guide | 8 | 1d |
| +18 | Hedge Fund Pivot | 7 | 6h |
| +18 | London buy side | 3 | 14h |
| +11 | Mid-career shift to buy side with niche background | 3 | 4d |
| +10 | Wfh / work remotely at MMs or SMs? | 6 | 4h |
| +4 | Atlantic Wolf Capital Closing? | 7 | 42m |
| +3 | How old is too old? | 3 | 2d |
| 0 | Walleye Capital | 1 | 2d |
| 0 | Hedge funds | 1 | 4d |
Career Resources
I seriously doubt anyone from RenTech is on this forum or even knows it exists
Too busy trying to get published to waste time on some forum.
probably the reason they're so exclusive is because that's where the hollywood chomos, jeff epstein, and other VIP democrats park their capital. can't get into legal trouble for trading practices if you run the world
Medallion doesn't take outside capital, coverage analyst
Okay, my first comment was facetious, but you're actually a retard. Obviously, there's a ton of inside capital, but if you think they'd say no to someone like Obama giving them $, then you're probably flexing RBC M&A right now. You really believe that the most secretive hedge fund in the planet is transparent about its capital structure?
Tell me you have never bothered to learn anything about RenTech without telling me you haven't read anything about RenTech.
"Read anything"
Yeah bro your speculative articles about the world's most secretive fund must make you a Medallion afficionado
Feel like this guy is bottombuckethardo or a new troll
my question is how the hell are they able to keep their methods in medallion fund so secretive. There has to be at least one math nerd that let out the secret to his friends and they spread it around. Only stuff I heard was that the went through terabytes of data to find correlations (ie weather and stock prices).
Other math nerds at the top of their game probably don't care? I go to Terence Tao and spill the beans he probably would roll his eyes on the boring problem I am solving compared to his field medal's work. Also, it is very likely that most mathematicians simply don't/can't know of enough operations or don't want to leave their cushy job after career's worth of hard work. These are probably some level headed people capable of knowing the consequence of spilling secrets, compared to some analyst boasting about ongoing M&A deal he's working on in front of the first girl he sees at the bar.
is RenTech a cushy job or do they grind you like hell (at least until you're like late 40's and 50's). Or maybe they just have passion so they work longer?
Hard to know exactly given everyone has to sign an NDA, but I am sure like most quant funds they work extremely hard to remain the best fund out there. I think these mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists wouldn't mind working hard given they are chosen for the papers they have published and their work is probably around the top of their field, so the opportunity cost of continuing to publish great papers in their fields must be countered with the work they do at the fund. From the rumors on the internet, people who usually choose not to work at Rentech do so because of the location and not necessarily because of the work. If you have interacted with people in academia, you might have noticed PhDs can work really long hours at times without almost any pay, so they probably already have the mindset to be able to work hard and long enough (other option would be to remain in academia and work on low pay where the probability of producing groundbreaking work is pretty low even for people with Rentech level intelligence).
Judging by the book and various talks Jim Simons has given, it’s super unlikely that there’s any single mathematical idea at the backbone of it. Besides even if someone worked there and mentioned to a friend that they proved idk something interesting about some family of statistical models, you can’t really just take a bit of good mathematics and monetise it on its own without some serious data engineering effort. There is no “equation” of the market to “solve” to get that kind of performance, more like collectively millions of research and engineering hours over the course of decades done by many of the top quantitative scientists who were bored of being poor.
OP here. It's interesting since Simons hired some Russian/ex-Soviet kids who were so rebellious (might be because of their cultural background, as insinuated by the author of More Money than God) that they actually left RenTech without signing the NDA that they cannot join a rival financial services firm (for the rest of their life). Somehow, Medallion continued to beat almost all quant or non-quant funds.
That's completely unenforceable.
I worked for one of the rentech OGs after he spun out a family office so I know a great deal more about them than most. Wouldn't advise going through a whole PhD just to take a shot at getting into there, they'd find that pretty transparent. Heard some good stories about the place but it's definitely geared towards people who wouldn't have had finance at the front of their mind throughout their academic career as others here have mentioned.
So is there some secret sauce at all or is the stellar records simply their brilliance?
I think the best answer is both really - they’re just consistently brilliant enough to keep inventing a new special sauce once the old one starts slowing down.
Consequatur saepe omnis illo ducimus ex ipsa quisquam. Aut omnis tenetur voluptatem aut ullam. Sed qui hic non odit. Nemo corporis quo magnam. Quaerat accusantium possimus maxime aut omnis. Cumque enim perferendis praesentium eius placeat non.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...