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Jim Simons Retiring From RenTec; Is The SPARCs' Domination Ending?

Tyler Durden's picture




 

If this is indicative of the beginning of the end for Medallion, it raises many questions:

1) Medallion is the sterling example of a M/N quant trading system.

2) Medallion is up 20% YTD. That means someone was on the losing side of those trades.

3) RIEF done? Will anybody want to keep their money in RenTec with JS out, especially after this year's deplorable performance.

4) Did the SEC uncover impropriety?

Expect major changes in the electronic trading landscape

 

Update: Jimbo will be replaced by the firm's Co-Presidents, and former IBM TJW Research Center employees, Peter Brown and Robert Mercer. Bios below:

Peter Brown, PhD, Co-President and Co-head of Trading and Research Dr. Brown joined Renaissance in November 1993 as an Equity Portfolio Manager for Nova Fund. With Dr. Robert Mercer, he is responsible for all technical trading and research conducted by Renaissance. Dr. Brown has a BA in mathematics from Harvard College and a PhD in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University.
Before joining Renaissance, Dr. Brown was a member of the research staff at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center from 1984 to 1993.

Robert Mercer, PhD, Co-President and Co-head of Trading and Research Dr. Mercer joined Renaissance in November 1993 as an Equity Portfolio Manager with primary responsibility for the management of Nova Fund. With Dr. Brown, he is responsible for all technical trading and research conducted by Renaissance. Dr. Mercer has a PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois. Before joining Renaissance, Dr. Mercer was a member of the research staff at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center from 1972 to 1993.

 

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Thu, 10/08/2009 - 17:46 | 93504 Pirate
Pirate's picture

Holy Shit, i wonder if this will open capacity for Ren employees in Medallion to front run all the sheep in RIEF.

Thu, 10/08/2009 - 17:49 | 93511 pinkboxtrader
pinkboxtrader's picture

Related to RenTec and its 'econophysics' models. For Cheeky et al: 'The Financial Simulacrum'

http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/management/apfa/Kilkenny%20Papers/Sc...

"The double virtualization (symbolic and technological) observed in the financial world
transforms the financial market in a cultural simulacrum, a hyper-reality which has no referent
anymore (but which still have some impacts on the economic reality).
In the last section, we have showed that this absence of referent allows a plurality of
theoretical interpretations of the financial reality. The fragmentation of knowledge that we can currently observe in financial economics can be considered as the epistemological consequence of the hyper-reality in finance."

Seems to fit the themes we've been observing of the market as exhibiting emergent behaviors of a complex system of hyper-reality.

Thu, 10/08/2009 - 19:37 | 93615 Cheeky Bastard
Cheeky Bastard's picture

awesome paper, and thank you for posting the link here pinkboxtrader. good to see that Baudrillard is getting some worthy mention among academia members.

 

The problem with many of micro-narrations is their hyper-reality. Death is more real, pain is more real, money is more real, everything is so real, that surely the point where reality breaks into many surreal referents, and thus insures chaos, has, surely, already started to devour the horizon; and soon, it will devour us all .... Ultimately, when all is real, up to the point it is not; and there exist no meta-narrative referent; the darkness of post-modernity will be pitch black dark ... Man is dead, so is God, and seemingly the only thing that is in its full force of life; is a product if a dead Man in the form of exchangeable commodity; which will, surely be broken as a cultural narrative of the Western Civilization.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 13:19 | 95320 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

When was this published?

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 07:31 | 95760 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Thought-provoking stuff. Have you read Sokal's "Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" - I wonder if the authors were thinking along the same lines -

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_sin...

Tue, 10/13/2009 - 17:56 | 98085 pinkboxtrader
pinkboxtrader's picture

it certainly seems as if the original publishers of that sokal paper were thinking along the same lines as many of today's market participants...

Thu, 10/08/2009 - 17:49 | 93512 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Wow

- Comfortably Smug

Thu, 10/08/2009 - 18:06 | 93539 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Pequot cap redux?

Thu, 10/08/2009 - 18:57 | 93584 andrew123
andrew123's picture

What is the surprise?  Isn't GS and half a dozen others doing the same thing that Jim was doing for many years?  Competition has heated up, and there is now a focus by the authorities on HFT.  Jim can read the writing on the wall.  It is like Bernanke retiring now, knowing what is going to happen.  The only difference is that Jim has a clue and Ben doesn't.

Fri, 10/09/2009 - 06:51 | 93919 aus_punter
aus_punter's picture

does this matter one bit ?

Fri, 10/09/2009 - 10:03 | 94032 Roy Batty
Roy Batty's picture

All of a sudden the big boys are calling it quits....Simons, Lewis, Mack, Dimon....more to come?  Coincidence?

Fri, 10/09/2009 - 10:31 | 94060 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

What is SPARCs? Are you referring to scalable processor architecture?

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 13:18 | 95319 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

When was this published?

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