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The article distorts the history of RenTech. I believe Simons started doing non-quant trading and he acquired RenTech, which was started by Berlekamp.

• tzs 12y ago
  That does not appear to be the case, at least according to anything I've been able to find with a bit of searching. I think you are thinking of Axcom, which RenTec acquired. Axcom was associated with Berlekamp (he was either founder, co-founder, or purchased a majority interest after it was founded...the internet is unclear on this).
  • foobarqux 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure that the RenTech business of today grew primarily out of Berlekamp's venture and not anything pre-existing, whatever it was called.
  • auntienomen 12y ago
    There was a Bloomberg article about this some years ago. Axcom was run by James Ax, and jointly owned by Ax & Simons. (Axcom was a 'trading advisor'. They made recommendations to Renaissance, which managed a fund based on these recommendations.) Ax was in essence hired by Simons to explore & develop quantitative trading ideas Simons & Baum had come up with while they were making more traditional trades. Berlekamp came along several years later, as a consultant. One can find claims that he developed a lot of RenTech's IP, but as far as I can tell these claims are sourced from Berlekamp himself. Since Berlekamp's own fund went out of business after a few years of operation, I'm inclined to dismiss these claims as marketing.
    • vellum 12y ago
      > There was a Bloomberg article about this some years ago. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nw&pname=mm_0108_story1.html http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nw&pname=mm_0108_stor...