Tags: AIG, Beatles, EU, Fed, Galleon, Goldman Sachs, Greece, Insider Trading, Jim Simons, Music, Raj Rajaratnam, Renaissance Technologies, Taxes
Tags: Bank of America, Ben Bernanke, Fed, Hedge funds, Jim Simons, JP Morgan, Ken Lewis, Pay czar, Real Estate, Renai, Renaissance Technologies, Tim Geithner, US Dollar, Zoe Cruz
Tags: Canyon Partners, Citadel, Jim Simons, Oaktree, Philippe Jabre, Renaissance Technologies, Stanley Druckenmiller
Alpha Magazine's list of the top 25 hedge fund earners is out and Renaissance Technologies' Jim Simons has recaptured the top position with earnings estimated at $2.5 billion. John Paulson moved down to #2 at $2 billion. Centaurus Energy's John Arnold is #4 at $1.5 billion, George Soros is #4 at $1.1 billion and Bridgewater Associates' Ray Dalio rounds out the top five at $780 million. Here are the top 25:
Tags: Bridgewater, Bruce Kovner, Compensation, DE Shaw, George Soros, Hedge funds, Jim Chanos, Jim Simons, John Arnold
FINalternatives has culled through the Forbes list for all of the alternative investment guys who are represented. Notably missing: Allen Stanford. Here's the list:
Tags: Allen Stanford, Avenue Investments, Bruce Kovner, Carl Icahn, Citadel, DE Shaw, Eddie Lampert, George Soros, Harbinger, Hedge funds, Henry Kravis, Highbridge, Jim Simons, Leon Black, Private equity, SAC Capital, Sam Zell
The Wall Street Journal highlights Renaissance Technologies' Jim Simons' connection to mega-Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. Seems that he was involved in getting Stony Brook University's foundation to invest $500K in 1991, and two of his family foundation invested "a small part of their portfolios" with him in 1995. But Simons got suspicious as to how Bernie made money, and pulled out in 2003. And Stony Brook pulled $3.5 million of its then $8 million position in 2004 — Simons wanted them to pull it all — but others on the board disagreed. When the shit hit the fan and Bernie fessed up to his fraud, Stony Brook disclosed that it lost $5.5 million, although it had apparently pulled out $8.7 million over the years on a $2.7 million investment.
Sounds like both Simons' family foundation and Stony Brook Foundation are some of those at risk who might have to pony up those phantom profits that they got out…..
Tags: Bernie Madoff, Jim Simons, Lawsuit, Renaissance Technologies
Down 12% for 2008, Jim Simons'$3 billion futures fund, Renaissance Institutional Futures is waiving its 1% management fee for 2009. Simons' Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund, down 16%, won't get the same deal. Marketed as a fund that's designed to beat the S&P by 4-6%, even with the crap return, it met the fund's goal. And no worries for the big Medallion fund. It was up 80% in '08. But that fund invests only Renaissance employees' money — too bad for outside investors. The good news for outside investors: if they want their cash, Renaissance isn't limiting withdrawals. At least so far.
We're listening to the House Oversight Committee testimony of the hedge fund bigs, including George Soros, Jim Simons, John Paulson, Phil Falcone and Ken Griffin. Soros just came up to bat as the first speaker. And he plugs his new book.
LOL
Tags: Citadel, George Soros, Harbinger, Hedge funds, Jim Simons, Paulson & Co, Politics
Harbinger's Phil Falcone, Citadel's Ken Griffin, Paulson & Co's John Paulson, RenTech's Jim Simons and George Soros have a date with congress on Thursday, as they become the latest group on the hot seat to face what's likely to be some hostile questions.
Tags: Citadel, George Soros, Harbinger, Hedge funds, Jim Simons, Politics, Renaissance Technologies
And no suprise here, John Paulson, who shorted sub-prime related issues in arguably the best trade in history, tops the list at $3 billion plus….
To make the top 100, you had to make at least $75 million….
Here’s the top 10:
Tags: Citadel, GLG Partners, Harbinger, Hedge funds, Jim Simons, Paul Tudor Jones, Paulson & Co, SAC Capital
Billionaire hedge fund guru James Simons and his wife Marilyn are donating $60 million to SUNY Stony Brook for a new Physics center at the school. Simons was the former chairman of SUNY Stony Brook’s math department and has made significant gifts to the school in the past…
James and Marilyn Simons announced the
gift, the largest ever to a school within the SUNY system, at a press conference
yesterday with Governor Spitzer in Manhattan. The donation will go toward the
creation of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, where scholars will
study subjects at the cutting edge of physics, including string theory, which
scientists believe could yield valuable insights into the properties of the
universe."We believe there is a chance that
work accomplished at the center will significantly change and deepen our
understanding of the physical universe and of its basic mathematical
structure," Mr. Simons said.
Tags: Hedge funds, Jim Simons, Philanthropy, Renaissance Technologies
In its first annual loss at one of its hedge funds in 20 years, Renaissance Technologies’ Institutional Equities Fund is said to have had its first down year in 3007 where it lost 1%
We continue to be fascinated by the festive OfficeMax dancing elves, so we present to you our troop of hedge fund heads for your entertainment: SAC Capital’s Steve Cohen, Renaissance Technologies’ Jim Simons, Citadel’s Ken Griffin, and Icahn & Co’s Carl Icahn shaking and shimmying…
Prior post: The Dancing Wall Street Elves
Tags: Carl Icahn, Citadel, Hedge funds, Humor, Jim Simons, SAC Capital
The Wall Street Journal goes through a list of some of the likely winners and losers in the market meltdown:
Tags: Atticus, Bruce Kovner, Caxton, CDO, Credit Crunch, Dan Loeb, GLG Partners, Hedge funds, Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies
Throwing water on a Financial Times report that they were planning to sell a minority stake, Renaissance Technologies issued a denial:
"We are not in discussions and there are no plans," a spokesman for the firm said. "There is no truth to the story."
So much for that. At least for now.
Renaissance Tech says no plans for stake sale – Reuters
Which is the next hedge fund thinking about selling a piece of itself? It could be Renaissance Technoloagies….
Down 8.7% through August 10, Renaissance Technologies has apparently cut those losses considerably, to only around 1.35% for the month to date….
Headlines are rolling out on Bloomberg: Renaissance Technologies is down 8.7% so far in August and 7.4% for the year. It’s founder Jim Simons, said in a letter to investors that they’re staying the course, and that Renaissance "remains strong".
"We have been caught in what appears to be a large wave of de-leveraging on the part of quantitative long/short hedge funds" Simons said in the investor letter.
Tags: Hamptons, Hedge funds, Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies
It was the computer’s fault!: Sometimes computers do really well at calling the investment shots, but sometimes they suck. Like in the recently volatile markets where some quant funds have run into a really rough patch. The Wall Street Journal talks about which funds have been taking hits. And the news is helping to roil the markets this morning:
Global Alpha, Goldman’s widely known
internal hedge fund, is now down about 16% for the year after a choppy July,
when its performance fell about 8%, according to people briefed on the matter.
The fund, based in New York, manages about $9 billion.The fund’s traders in recent days have been
selling certain risky positions, according to these people. Early this week,
those moves sparked widespread rumors on Wall Street that the entire fund might
be shut down. A Goldman spokesman has said the rumors are "categorically
untrue."Campbell & Co., an $11 billion hedge
fund that trades in the futures market as well as in stocks and bonds and is
completely driven by such computer programs, was down 10% to 12% by the end of
July.Quant funds — "quant" stands for
quantitative — generally operate by building computer models of market behavior
and then allowing the computer programs to dictate trading. A recurring
characteristic of the recent trouble in financial markets is that many lenders,
funds and brokerages were following statistical models that grossly
underestimated how risky the market environment had become.
Tags: Goldman Sachs, Hedge funds, Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies
When you’ve got a behemoth $29 billion hedge fund and your tripping over competitors like SAC Capital all looking for similar opportunities, maybe it means your fund is a little too big. With his fund earning lower returns so far this year than the S&P 500 and falling behind competitors like Pequot and Zweig-DiMenna, that seems to be what Jim Simons is acknowledging. He’s at least temporarily said to be turning off "the spigot a bit". In addition, Simons plans to slow down, stepping back from day to day operations in the next few years. In the meantime though, his new futures fund opens on October 1.
Renaissance Institutional gained 5.8
percent this year as of July 6, compared with the S&P 500’s 8.9 percent
advance. The fund will limit monthly inflows to less than $1.5 billion, the
current average, said a person who attended a meeting Simons held with clients
last week at New York’s Pierre Hotel.
Renaissance Technologies’ Jim Simons could earn guzillions more than the $1.7 billion he earned last year: He’s opening a new managed futures fund with a $25 billion capacity:
The group’s flagship $6bn Medallion fund, which trades in a lot of futures,
has been quickly overtaken in growth by its newer Renaissance Institutional
Equities Fund, which was launched two years ago and trades only in stocks. The
Institutional fund, which was designed to hold $100bn, already manages $26bn. It
charges much lower fees than Medallion’s notoriously high 44 per cent
performance fee, and was designed to provide lower volatility and a lower
trading turnover, appealing to pension funds.
Tags: Commodities, Futures, Hedge funds, Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies
(Warren’s not officially supporting HIllary — he thinks Obama would also make a fine president, and has offered to host a party for him too.)
The event is in two parts. First, there is an “intimate” dinner with Mrs Clinton and Mr Buffett for 50 guests paying $4,600 each – the maximum allowed, people involved in the planning said. Later, more donors – smaller contributors – will go to the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan for what was billed as “a conversation” with the Democratic New York senator and the world’s second richest man.
Bankers helping Mrs Clinton include Roger Altman, the former deputy Treasury secretary who runs
Evercore, a boutique bank, and Blair Effron of Centerview, another boutique, who is advising Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in its $5bn bid for Dow Jones.
Tags: DE Shaw, Evercore, Farallon, Hedge funds, Jim Simons, John Mack, Perry Capital, Private equity, Renaissance Technologies, Rupert Murdoch
America has a math geek shortage. Renaissance Technologies head and resident math guru is on a crusade to change that. AP inteviewed the hedge fund industry’s highest paid man who talked about the critical need to turn out more quants to keep the U.S. competitive:
What does the workforce at Renaissance say about Americans’ skill sets?
Simons: The workforce at Renaissance reflects the paucity of trained Americans … They’re Chinese, they’re Japanese, they’re French, they’re German, they’re Icelandic, they’re Russian, they’re Polish – I think have 20 countries represented.
Once in a while an American walks through the door, and we grab him if he’s good, but fewer and fewer such folks are coming through the door.
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