Which is to say, they’re losing money.
Renaissance Technologies’ reputation as one of the greatest hedge funds of all time is based on the fact that for 30 years, it has done nothing but print tens of billions of dollars. This is true—of its flagship Medallion fund, which is even better than we originally thought, and which is conveniently not available to anyone who neither works at RenTech nor has a blood relationship to founder Jim Simons. RenTech’s other funds may be as close to Medallion as one can get, but they’ve never been much of an approximation, and they still aren’t, for Medallion is up something like 40% this year, and the other funds, are, uh, not.
Renaissance Technologies, the quantitative hedge fund firm founded by Jim Simons, lost almost 21% this year through the first week of June in its market-neutral vehicle…. The Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund, which only trades U.S.-listed stocks that its computer models expect to rise, was down 11% this year through May.
Renaissance Technologies Posts 21% Drop at Market-Neutral Fund [Bloomberg]