article

inside a moneymaking machine like no other

[WHAT]

] by Katherine Burton @ bloomberg.com - Burton looks into the legendary Renaissance Capital Medallion fund which has averaged a > 70% annual return over its 22 year history
] Between 1994 and 2014, Renaissance’s Medallion fund averaged a 71.8% annual return before fees. In 2008, it produced a 98.2% return despite the onset of a global economic recession.

[WHY]

]

[WHERE]

] READ THE FULL ARTICLE

] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-21/how-renaissance-s-medallion-fund-became-finance-s-blackest-box

[WHEN]

] 2016-11-21 - published
] 2016-12-16 - added to money/investing/research

[EXAMPLE]

]
x] 300 employees,
x] employees are NOT wall street people, they are scientists,
x] fund has high fees, even for employees,
x] can purchase through payroll contributions
x] founder james(jim) simons retired,
x] currently company has 2 co CEO's, peter brown robert mercer

[HOW-TO]

]

[REFERENCE]

] # 6664 - CREATE-article# 5466 (this) -
>tb] A Moneymaking Machine Like Few Others (bloomberg.com) ,SRC=hn(258)/comments(205) ] by Katherine Burton @ bloomberg.com - Burton takes a look at Renaissance Technologies and it's legendary Medallion fund. This firm of 'Quants' has shepherded the 'employee only' fund to phenomonal returns for over 28 years.
] # 6663 - CD-find -

comment mine

I feel sad that so much brain power goes into market arbitrage. They produce nothing usable by anyone else. Imagine if these people built companies that made new advances and new products.

vostok 21 days ago [-]

I feel sad that you think this about finance. I believe I've done a lot of good for the world and have gotten the opportunity to work with some very smart people along the way.

I first started working in finance because it was one of the few industries that paid engineers a fair salary without trying to trick us with monopoly money.

Of course, the world has changed and now tech companies are doing the same.

> I believe I've done a lot of good for the world

My job has literally been to ensure that, out of every invested dollar, more money goes to the investment and less money goes to traders and other intermediaries.

It may not sound like a big deal, but this is literally billions of dollars a year that are invested in productive industries instead of going to someone's bonus or, worse yet, just vanishing due to lack of care

> I really don't believe that the amount of money the financial industry is making is commensurate with its value provided to society.

I don't know if it's because I'm uninformed, but I would agree with you. It's not really clear to me why investment bankers earn such huge fees. I suspect that it's because they're basically able to pay their friends with shareholders' money. I don't remember where I first heard this idea, but I can't help but think that it rings true.

My hope is that some day we'll be able to do to banking what we've done for trading.

> It's not really clear to me why investment bankers earn such huge fees.

You can think of investment bankers as salespeople. They sell very high value products in very competitive markets.

Whether you think that salespeople do an important job and/or a job that should be paid commensurate with the value of the product is a matter of opinion.Having spent a lot of time with salespeople when I was last in a startup, I have a lot of respect for folk who could do a job that I would most definitely, spectacularly fail at. YMMV.

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ID: 5466

NAME: inside-a-moneymaking-machine-like-no-other

DESCRIPTION: inside-a-moneymaking-machine-like-no-other - by Katherine Burton @ bloomberg.com - Burton looks into the legendary Renaissance Capital Medallion fund which has averaged a > 70% annual return over its 22 year history

AUTHOR: article.author/s

EDITOR: article.editor/s

PUBLISHER: article.publisher/s

STATUS: Write

PRIORITY: -5

OWNER ID: 75

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