Information on Renaissance Technologies is so incredibly sparse. It must be a fascinating workplace! It's fun to speculate on the nature of their success (spec

Information on Renaissance Technologies is so incredibly sparse. It must be a fascinating workplace! It's fun to speculate on the nature of their success (specifically the Medallion fund). 3 possibilitiese spring to mind: 1. Best in class execution on winner-takes-all strategies. Eg. 10 hedge funds all try the same arbitrage trade but only the quickest one make money. 2. A killer app that no one else knows about. Like, I dunno, artificial intelligence... 3. Medallion is just a legend built up to lure investors into their public funds and collect the fees. Joking on that last one. What I drew from this interview was that while Simons is obviously incredibly smart, they key thing was that at Stony Brook he learned how to put together a team of other very smart people, and that more than any individual financial insight has generated his success in investing.