>If RenTech is so good, they should have people that are a class above everyone else What does this mean? All the firms you have posted do different things. >

>If RenTech is so good, they should have people that are a class above everyone else What does this mean? All the firms you have posted do different things. > Does someone claim that RenTech has more smart traders than Jane Street, Citadel etc? Again this is not apples to apples. You know a bit, but not nearly enough. Citadel is actually two companies. Citadel Securities (Ken G's + managments prop capital, no external investors) have a tonne of strategies with extremely high sharpe ratios and returns (triple digits in some cases), but ultimately they are capacity limited. Jane Street too (prop capital) fits this mold. Citadel the hedge fund (external capital) has much lower sharpes, but a much higher capacity (65 or so billion) and looks roughly similar to RenTechs public funds (external capital). The idea is you keep as much of the juicy stuff to yourself as you can justify, and then trade on the public image + free option on management / performance fees to grow an external asset management business and rake that in parallel. I dont see any contradiction. In fact its the rational profit maximising thing to do. Also being "smart" isnt even a half of the formula to running a successful markets/trading/investing business. Alot of it is culture (as the article points out) and other hard to replicate edges. Hedge Funds by and large are not quantitative (and even when they proclaim to be, actually are not terribly sophisticated). What they really are is expert marketing / narrative machines enticing asset allocators to lend them AUM. Once you understand this, it begins to make sense that those who are truly quantatively gifted operate on another plane.