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Sadly I've never been able to snag an interview with RenTech (and I've applied like a dozen times), but they're the ones that actually made me start taking fina

Sadly I've never been able to snag an interview with RenTech (and I've applied like a dozen times), but they're the ones that actually made me start taking finance a lot more seriously. Maybe if I ever finish my PhD they'll hire me. I had previously thought of HFT and Quant as a bunch of "finance bros", and kind of dismissed it as "not real CS" [1]. Reading about RenTech and Jim Simons made realize that there's actually a lot of really cool and interesting math and CS that goes into this stuff. Jim Simons being a respected mathematician who just decided to change trajectories has always fascinated me, and it's sad that he's gone. [1] I don't believe this anymore and I feel dumb for thinking it in the first place.

filoleg 3y ago
His whole RenTech story was fascinating. Effectively an outsider in finance who gathered a bunch of other outsiders (aka big mathematicians), and decided to start a hedge fund that takes zero interest in the actual companies and trades solely on math. Which makes sense, since none of the main people involved in its creation had any corporate or finance experience, but tons of math experience and knowledge. This is oversimplifying it like crazy, but I recommend anyone to anyone with even a passing curiosity for this look up the details (or read “The Man Who Solved The Market”, which is documenting the beginnings and growth of RenTech, as well as that of Simons; very enjoyable read).
- tombert 3y ago
  Yep, not argument here at all, RenTech is a super fascinating outlier in finance. It's kind of inspiring. I don't know a ton about finance or trading algorithms, but I know a fair bit (I think) about math and CS, and because of RenTech I've formulating my own trading strategies (just paper trades). Thus far all I've been able to do is lose all my pretend money by trying to play options, but it's still fun to try. Will I be successful and make billions? Almost certainly not, but it's an excuse to play with different types of math that I don't play with very often, but RenTech proved that you can beat the market by taking advantage mathematics.
  - danielmarkbruce 3y ago
    There are some interesting interviews around rentech. It starts to feel like they made a lot of money out of being extremely thorough, by doing a lot of reasonably simple (at least by the standards of math phds) things extremely well.
- 1024core 3y ago
  IIRC his fund averaged around 30% gains per year, every year, over 30 years. (I'm going from memory here, too lazy to look it up). That is just such an unbelievable performance number.
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    Aren't there some shenanigans with those numbers around their larger funds not doing as well? It's easy to make a few high margin dollars, hard to make a lot of high margin dollars.
    - makestuff 3y ago
      They limited the fund size so employees frequently got distributions from the fund instead of just rolling over their investments. However, the distributions were still in the millions of dollars. They also got into some tax trouble with uncle sam and had to pay 7b in back taxes (https://www.wsj.com/articles/james-simons-robert-mercer-others-at-renaissance-to-pay-7-billion-to-settle-tax-probe-11630617328 https://www.wsj.com/articles/james-simons-robert-mercer-othe...)
    - danielmarkbruce 3y ago
      depends on your definition of "few". Rentech made a "few" for very large "few".
      - paulpauper 3y ago
        lol . Only made tens of billion. What a failure.
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    I'd still wish to have details on this (I too heard of similar numbers for his fund before), because in my newb eyes .. such returns would mean they could absorb a huge chunk of the planet liquidity.
    - 3y ago
- _vaporwave_ 3y ago
  “The Man Who Solved The Market” is fascinating because it spans almost the entire history quantitative finance (through the lens of RenTech) dating back to the 1970s. Simmons was one of the first to realize the advantage of collecting and analyzing vast sums of data to identify patterns in financial markets. They were digitizing magnetic tapes and collecting more data than they could even process given technical limitations of the time.
  - benreesman 3y ago
    I can second this book recommendation. Remarkable candor in such a secretive field.
- gcanko 3y ago
  When I read "The Man Who Solved The Market”, I blown away with the story of Robert Mercer who arguably paved the way for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. I wonder how different the world would be if Simmons didn't exist, the butterfly effect can sometimes have some massive unintended consequences.
- real0mar 3y ago
  Does the book cover anything about how the fund actually works? It's understandable that they'd want to keep a tight lid on it, but I'm so curious
  - paulpauper 3y ago
    no. One can infer it involves analyzing data, but for obvious reasons the ingredients for possibly reconstructing it are omitted.
  - mgfist 3y ago
    The book covers some earlier aspects of the strategy. And I think the "spirit" of the strategies exists today, though tangibly very different and not actionable.
  - richrichie 3y ago
    I believe they were doing ML based trading. Their edge was data collection, cleaning and standardisation and the ability to trade a lot at very cheap borrowing cost. This was way before computers became a thing in trading or ML became a thing.
  - chronic640201 3y ago
    > Does the book cover anything about how the fund actually works? Basically, no.
PaulHoule 3y ago
I remember the time that I went to a conference put on by Sun Microsystems in the early 2000s and asked a question about certain hardware being good for main memory databases which got me jumped on by a RenTech recruiter. Had I known what was about to happen to my current job at that time (mentioned in another comment in this thread) I would have taken more interest.
karmakurtisaani 3y ago
RT must be one of the most selective companies in the world. Even to get an interview you'd better have a damn good CV (medals in math/cs/science Olympiads, degree from a top tier school etc.). And then after a few years of working there you're a (multi)millionaire. It's totally bonkers.
- tombert 3y ago
  I don't really blame them for not picking me, clearly whatever they've been doing has been working. I'm not entitled to a job from them, obviously. I don't really know what a "top tier" university is, but I can say for sure that my undergrad (WGU) wouldn't count as that. The PhD I'm in is from a more prestigious university [1], and I guess FAANG experience isn't enough to snag an interview with them. [1] University of York, though I don't know if that counts as "top tier" either.
  - karmakurtisaani 3y ago
    If it makes you feel better, my CV isn't even good enough to get a FAANG interview..
    - 77pt77 3y ago
      Really? Google harasses anyone with a live linkedin profile. Getting to an onsite interview is a different matter though. I know 3 people at google, all senior, either SE or people managers. None had brilliant academic records. One took almost 10 years to finish his sociology adjacent undergrad. He's the most "successful" and has been there for almost 15 years, 10 in the states. The others have been there for like 5. Make of this info what you wish...
      - 77pt77 3y ago
        I forgot to say, none were technically amazing, just good, one not even that but not awfull either. None had impressive intelligence either.
    - 3y ago
mhh__ 3y ago
When have high frequency traders and quants ever been finance bros? Wut?
- tombert 3y ago
  Again, I was wrong and I acknowledged that, but I guess I grouped HFT and Quants into the same camp as the characters from American Psycho. They're different groups, I respect them now and feel dumb for not respecting them before.
- kqr 3y ago
  The very early quants (people who did rough mental options math in the Chicago pits in the 1970s) were finance bros by osmosis. You had to be. It changed at some point during the '80s, probably to no little degree thanks to Renaissance.
rcpt 3y ago
The phone screen was hard and I didn't pass. It's not usual tech interviews they hit you with a lot of stats and math GRE style questions. Maybe the prep in finance is different
- infecto 3y ago
  They don't really hire finance people so I suspect most/all of the interview processes are heavy on the match/stat side.
  - em500 3y ago
    Quantitative finance interviews are pretty much all probability and stats questions.
    - kccqzy 3y ago
      Yeah there's a famous but outdated book called A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews by Xinfeng Zhou that gives you some idea of what questions they like to ask.
amelius 3y ago
I have to confess that I still think that. Where would you recommend I start reading to find financial enlightenment?
- tombert 3y ago
  I think Veritasium made a really good video talking about some of the differential equations governing option pricing [1] which I found really fascinating. Patrick Boyle's video about Jim Simons' history is really interesting too [2]. Also just reading about Jim Simons' being an already-very-successful mathematician dropping everything to start a hedge fund and ending up extremely successful at the end of it was a bit of a wakeup call. Clearly this was an extremely smart dude (he was the chair of the math department at Stony Brook!), and so if this is interesting enough for someone like him, then it's probably something worth looking into. I read through a book on basic trading strategies and I thought it was pretty interesting [3], though I've gone in a pretty different direction from what they taught. [1] https://youtu.be/A5w-dEgIU1M https://youtu.be/A5w-dEgIU1M [2] https://youtu.be/xkbdZb0UPac https://youtu.be/xkbdZb0UPac [3] https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Algorithmic-Trading-alternative/dp/1839217715/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3ST66R2ECXY8P&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.QNRYWwTMUwQjNJp4I6IlCnwwvxGpGMuqwnKCdgQDKTWuNoXcg3RqilFoVo6OHNth.LbtPOy3dNKaug2sKZsF-EyDwXVJaoTdHVZ3H9Jj0RFk&dib_tag=se&keywords=machine+learning+for+algorithmic+trading+by+stefan+jansen&qid=1715360589&sprefix=machine+learning+for+algor%2Caps%2C83&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Algorithmic-Trading-...
sergius 3y ago
You should read these books: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43889703 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43889703 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/25733505 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/25733505 And some of the myths you have may be dispelled :-)
- phyalow 3y ago
  Both are excellent, I'll add these two too: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/186124 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/186124 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/482347 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/482347
buggythebug 3y ago
Why would you think it was a bunch of "finance bros"? You can BS your way to the top in such things as Sales because raw intellect and mental ability is not required. The same can be said for many aspects of finance. But you can't just do HFT or Quant because you want to - you actually need skills. Same way I can't BS my way into designing a rocket - you either can or you can't.
- kwere 3y ago
  Being able to BS yourself upward is a skill in itself. Management becomes "political" up the ladder
  - matwood 3y ago
    EQ is a thing just like IQ. A person can get by with just one if it’s off the charts, but most people would do better expanding both.
- tombert 3y ago
  Because I didn't know what they actually did, I assumed it was just another rebranding of the same seemingly-useless stuff that I associated with finance bros. I mentioned in the very comment that you're replying to that I was wrong.

filoleg 3y ago

His whole RenTech story was fascinating. Effectively an outsider in finance who gathered a bunch of other outsiders (aka big mathematicians), and decided to start a hedge fund that takes zero interest in the actual companies and trades solely on math. Which makes sense, since none of the main people involved in its creation had any corporate or finance experience, but tons of math experience and knowledge. This is oversimplifying it like crazy, but I recommend anyone to anyone with even a passing curiosity for this look up the details (or read “The Man Who Solved The Market”, which is documenting the beginnings and growth of RenTech, as well as that of Simons; very enjoyable read).

tombert 3y ago
Yep, not argument here at all, RenTech is a super fascinating outlier in finance. It's kind of inspiring. I don't know a ton about finance or trading algorithms, but I know a fair bit (I think) about math and CS, and because of RenTech I've formulating my own trading strategies (just paper trades). Thus far all I've been able to do is lose all my pretend money by trying to play options, but it's still fun to try. Will I be successful and make billions? Almost certainly not, but it's an excuse to play with different types of math that I don't play with very often, but RenTech proved that you can beat the market by taking advantage mathematics.
- danielmarkbruce 3y ago
  There are some interesting interviews around rentech. It starts to feel like they made a lot of money out of being extremely thorough, by doing a lot of reasonably simple (at least by the standards of math phds) things extremely well.
1024core 3y ago
IIRC his fund averaged around 30% gains per year, every year, over 30 years. (I'm going from memory here, too lazy to look it up). That is just such an unbelievable performance number.
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  Aren't there some shenanigans with those numbers around their larger funds not doing as well? It's easy to make a few high margin dollars, hard to make a lot of high margin dollars.
  - makestuff 3y ago
    They limited the fund size so employees frequently got distributions from the fund instead of just rolling over their investments. However, the distributions were still in the millions of dollars. They also got into some tax trouble with uncle sam and had to pay 7b in back taxes (https://www.wsj.com/articles/james-simons-robert-mercer-others-at-renaissance-to-pay-7-billion-to-settle-tax-probe-11630617328 https://www.wsj.com/articles/james-simons-robert-mercer-othe...)
  - danielmarkbruce 3y ago
    depends on your definition of "few". Rentech made a "few" for very large "few".
    - paulpauper 3y ago
      lol . Only made tens of billion. What a failure.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  I'd still wish to have details on this (I too heard of similar numbers for his fund before), because in my newb eyes .. such returns would mean they could absorb a huge chunk of the planet liquidity.
  - 3y ago
_vaporwave_ 3y ago
“The Man Who Solved The Market” is fascinating because it spans almost the entire history quantitative finance (through the lens of RenTech) dating back to the 1970s. Simmons was one of the first to realize the advantage of collecting and analyzing vast sums of data to identify patterns in financial markets. They were digitizing magnetic tapes and collecting more data than they could even process given technical limitations of the time.
- benreesman 3y ago
  I can second this book recommendation. Remarkable candor in such a secretive field.
gcanko 3y ago
When I read "The Man Who Solved The Market”, I blown away with the story of Robert Mercer who arguably paved the way for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. I wonder how different the world would be if Simmons didn't exist, the butterfly effect can sometimes have some massive unintended consequences.
real0mar 3y ago
Does the book cover anything about how the fund actually works? It's understandable that they'd want to keep a tight lid on it, but I'm so curious
- paulpauper 3y ago
  no. One can infer it involves analyzing data, but for obvious reasons the ingredients for possibly reconstructing it are omitted.
- mgfist 3y ago
  The book covers some earlier aspects of the strategy. And I think the "spirit" of the strategies exists today, though tangibly very different and not actionable.
- richrichie 3y ago
  I believe they were doing ML based trading. Their edge was data collection, cleaning and standardisation and the ability to trade a lot at very cheap borrowing cost. This was way before computers became a thing in trading or ML became a thing.
- chronic640201 3y ago
  > Does the book cover anything about how the fund actually works? Basically, no.

PaulHoule 3y ago

I remember the time that I went to a conference put on by Sun Microsystems in the early 2000s and asked a question about certain hardware being good for main memory databases which got me jumped on by a RenTech recruiter. Had I known what was about to happen to my current job at that time (mentioned in another comment in this thread) I would have taken more interest.

karmakurtisaani 3y ago

RT must be one of the most selective companies in the world. Even to get an interview you'd better have a damn good CV (medals in math/cs/science Olympiads, degree from a top tier school etc.). And then after a few years of working there you're a (multi)millionaire. It's totally bonkers.

tombert 3y ago
I don't really blame them for not picking me, clearly whatever they've been doing has been working. I'm not entitled to a job from them, obviously. I don't really know what a "top tier" university is, but I can say for sure that my undergrad (WGU) wouldn't count as that. The PhD I'm in is from a more prestigious university [1], and I guess FAANG experience isn't enough to snag an interview with them. [1] University of York, though I don't know if that counts as "top tier" either.
- karmakurtisaani 3y ago
  If it makes you feel better, my CV isn't even good enough to get a FAANG interview..
  - 77pt77 3y ago
    Really? Google harasses anyone with a live linkedin profile. Getting to an onsite interview is a different matter though. I know 3 people at google, all senior, either SE or people managers. None had brilliant academic records. One took almost 10 years to finish his sociology adjacent undergrad. He's the most "successful" and has been there for almost 15 years, 10 in the states. The others have been there for like 5. Make of this info what you wish...
    - 77pt77 3y ago
      I forgot to say, none were technically amazing, just good, one not even that but not awfull either. None had impressive intelligence either.
  - 3y ago

mhh__ 3y ago

When have high frequency traders and quants ever been finance bros? Wut?

tombert 3y ago
Again, I was wrong and I acknowledged that, but I guess I grouped HFT and Quants into the same camp as the characters from American Psycho. They're different groups, I respect them now and feel dumb for not respecting them before.
kqr 3y ago
The very early quants (people who did rough mental options math in the Chicago pits in the 1970s) were finance bros by osmosis. You had to be. It changed at some point during the '80s, probably to no little degree thanks to Renaissance.

rcpt 3y ago

The phone screen was hard and I didn't pass. It's not usual tech interviews they hit you with a lot of stats and math GRE style questions. Maybe the prep in finance is different

infecto 3y ago
They don't really hire finance people so I suspect most/all of the interview processes are heavy on the match/stat side.
- em500 3y ago
  Quantitative finance interviews are pretty much all probability and stats questions.
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    Yeah there's a famous but outdated book called A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews by Xinfeng Zhou that gives you some idea of what questions they like to ask.

amelius 3y ago

I have to confess that I still think that. Where would you recommend I start reading to find financial enlightenment?

tombert 3y ago
I think Veritasium made a really good video talking about some of the differential equations governing option pricing [1] which I found really fascinating. Patrick Boyle's video about Jim Simons' history is really interesting too [2]. Also just reading about Jim Simons' being an already-very-successful mathematician dropping everything to start a hedge fund and ending up extremely successful at the end of it was a bit of a wakeup call. Clearly this was an extremely smart dude (he was the chair of the math department at Stony Brook!), and so if this is interesting enough for someone like him, then it's probably something worth looking into. I read through a book on basic trading strategies and I thought it was pretty interesting [3], though I've gone in a pretty different direction from what they taught. [1] https://youtu.be/A5w-dEgIU1M https://youtu.be/A5w-dEgIU1M [2] https://youtu.be/xkbdZb0UPac https://youtu.be/xkbdZb0UPac [3] https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Algorithmic-Trading-alternative/dp/1839217715/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3ST66R2ECXY8P&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.QNRYWwTMUwQjNJp4I6IlCnwwvxGpGMuqwnKCdgQDKTWuNoXcg3RqilFoVo6OHNth.LbtPOy3dNKaug2sKZsF-EyDwXVJaoTdHVZ3H9Jj0RFk&dib_tag=se&keywords=machine+learning+for+algorithmic+trading+by+stefan+jansen&qid=1715360589&sprefix=machine+learning+for+algor%2Caps%2C83&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Algorithmic-Trading-...

sergius 3y ago

You should read these books: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43889703 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43889703 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/25733505 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/25733505 And some of the myths you have may be dispelled :-)

phyalow 3y ago
Both are excellent, I'll add these two too: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/186124 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/186124 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/482347 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/482347

buggythebug 3y ago

Why would you think it was a bunch of "finance bros"? You can BS your way to the top in such things as Sales because raw intellect and mental ability is not required. The same can be said for many aspects of finance. But you can't just do HFT or Quant because you want to - you actually need skills. Same way I can't BS my way into designing a rocket - you either can or you can't.

kwere 3y ago
Being able to BS yourself upward is a skill in itself. Management becomes "political" up the ladder
- matwood 3y ago
  EQ is a thing just like IQ. A person can get by with just one if it’s off the charts, but most people would do better expanding both.
tombert 3y ago
Because I didn't know what they actually did, I assumed it was just another rebranding of the same seemingly-useless stuff that I associated with finance bros. I mentioned in the very comment that you're replying to that I was wrong.