Renaissance Technologies - Trading Strategies Revealed | A Documentary

Renaissance Technologies is the most profitable  hedge fund in history. This is probably the single   most successful hedge fund in the history of the  industry in terms of its performance record. Right   so you gotta remember he charges a lot but  um before fee is 66 on average since 1988.   Behind the firm's wild success are a series of  mathematical models and powerful computers. The   quantitative models at Renaissance Technologies  are constantly being updated but what's more   important than those models are the ways and  methods that are used to discover trading signals Jim Simons the founder of Renaissance Technologies  is a legendary mathematician. He pioneered   a unique way of research and model building to  the world of hedge funds. He's worth 21 billion   dollars making him the highest earning hedge fund  manager in the world. Born and raised in Brookline   Massachusetts Jim Simons always knew that he  wanted to be a mathematician. We used to go to a   a delicatessen late at night when I was a student  and one day I saw Ambrose and Singer come in   late at night and they were obviously doing  mathematics and I saw this on a number of   occasions and I thought boy that's that's the  greatest job in the world! When you can just   hang out and hang out at a delicatessen and do  mathematics. Simons' enrolled in MIT and even   skipped the first year of mathematics thanks to  advanced placement courses he took in high school.   Simons' academic career was very smooth and after  earning his PHD he quickly became a professor of   math and also took a job as a cold war code  breaker. But he yearns for more, particularly   more money! Growing up in a middle-class  family Simons' always wanted to get rich.   Unlike other people in the academics who don't  really care about money Simons' on the other hand   knew exactly how to make money - start businesses.  While still at school he started a business with   his south American classmates they decided to  start a factory to produce vinyl floor tile   and PVC piping. Well I met some I made  friends at MIT with two Colombian boys   and they at a certain point started a business and  in fact it was my encouragement that they started   that business and my father and I invested a  small amount uh in that business which turned out   eventually uh to be a big success. This is a story  of James Simons that a lot of people don't hear   about so he took some time off to run the business  at first but as soon as the business takes off   he immediately delegated responsibilities to  other people and we saw that time and time again   with the story of RenTech but Simons' had to focus  on his academic career in 1976 at the age of 37   Simons was awarded the American mathematical  society's Oswald Viblen price in geometry   this price is the highest you can get in  mathematics it's the equivalence of Nobel prize   conquering one summit Simons was looking for  a new mountain to climb in 1974 the floor tile   company Simons' had started with his friends  sold a 50 stake delivering profits to Simons   and other owners Simons and his classmates made  a lot of money from this business he said let's   invest in the money so Simons knew a student of  his who was running a hedge fund by the name of   Charlie Fratfeld superseding Simons' wildest  expectations he 10 x their original investment   making them six million dollars total this is  a moment Simons realizes the best way to make   money is with finance he was wondering can I do  the same in 1978 Simons left academia to start   his own investment firm with the money he saved  and from his friends he started money metrics for years after starting money metrics Simons'  relied on intuition and fundamentals to trade it   was a great time to be in finance the fund is  doing so well he didn't really have to change   his approach but in the back of his mind  he was wondering can he use the mathematics   to model asset prices but Simons was getting  tired of the fundamental trading we did very well   but it was a gut wrenching experience you know  it's you know one day you walk in and you think   you're a genius god all my positions are in my  way look up and the next day you walk in and   they're against you and you feel here you're a  dope how could I have done what I did and so on   there was no rhyme or reason it was just you  know you put your finger in the air and you   try to sense which way the the wind is blowing  Simons' quickly started working on his first model   with the help of his colleague Lenny Baum they  built a simple mean reversion model buy currencies   if they moved a certain level below their recent  trend line and sell if they veer too far above it   the idea of meat reversion is very simple suppose  you're a farmer and the average price of corn is   five dollars a bushel now some days it may  be six dollars a bushel other days it may   be three dollars a bushel but in the long run  these prices will revert back to the mean value   this is what's called mean reversion back in  the 80s many commodities were priced like this   now his model would not work today but back  in the 80s this was a revolutionary idea   they quickly expanded the strategy beyond currency  trading by 1982 he changed the company's name to   Renaissance Technologies but soon enough their  simple mean reversion strategy started to fail   simple mean reversion is not sufficient anymore  as other competitors started to build their models   to stay ahead of the game Simons' had to hire more  talents this is what really separates gm Simons   apart from other hedge fund managers when he sees  a problem he knows exactly who will be able to   solve it he immediately brought another renowned  mathematician jim x to develop a new strategy   when Jim Axe looked at those asset prices  he noticed that it is a stochastic process   which is also called a random process and he  believed that using mathematical representation   is the best way to model those stochastic process  when people hear about the word random they think   that it's not predictable but that's not the  case in mathematics suppose you threw a dice   and you know each site will come up with a  probability and you can bet on those probabilities   to model the stochastic process they started  using machine learning machine learning is such   a buzzword today but in the 1980s most of hedge  fund managers don't even know what that means and   they still use their gut to trade but here's the  Renaissance Technologies ahead of everybody else   already started to use machine learning the  style of machine learning that Ren Tech used   was the kernel method the kernel used a  class of algorithms to do pattern analysis   the main tool used in academic finance is linear  regression to this day linear regression is used   to build forecasting models but the problem is the  movement of asset prices is non-linear so rather   than use linear regression Ren Tech decided to  build non-linear models to predict price movements   Simons' at the time was proposing building  an early machine learning system this model   would generate predictions for various commodity  prices based on complex patterns clusters and   correlations that'd be very hard for the naked eye  to see once again they were so ahead of their time   this kernel was like a black box that suggested  trades that people couldn't even understand when   the team started testing the model they quickly  see great returns the firm began incorporating   hard dimensional kernel regression approaches  higher dimensional kernels work best for trending   models they're great at predicting how long a  trend will last at this point Simons have put   up millions to this automated trading system  they call it the medallion fund the Simons saw   more potential improvement he started investing  heavily in bringing more mathematical talents with   the gen x model renaissance technology started  to combine trend following with main reversion the model has generated about 20 annual returns  which is a great performance considering most of   the hedge funds made less than 12 percent the  Simons' wanted better he brought out another   brilliant mathematician Ellyn Berlekamp  Ellyn Berlekamp’s specialty was game and   information theory he immediately suggested  to focus on shorter term traits to reduce risk   by going in and out quickly Simons took his advice  and started focusing on shorter term approach   they do a very different approach it's  all patterns it's all short term it's not   high frequency but it's something very distinct  from what everybody else is doing now Berlekamp   became fully in charge of the medallion fund he  started fully implementing his ideas he argued   they should learn to handle trades like casinos  a casino doesn't care about any particular bet   even if you win like 10 times a casino is happy  because it knows that in the long run the casino   has the statistical advantage this is what's  called the law of large numbers I think what   Ren Tech adopted was the kelly criterion this  is what we call the scientific gambling method   to put it simply it's your bet should be  proportional to how confidence you are in your bet   the formula is your expected net winnings divided  by your net winnings if you win I think this   is actually the secret sauce for Renaissance  Technologies they utilize massive compute power   combined with the scientific approach  and to discover trading patterns and   validate them and trade based on them they  keep collecting uh the patterns and anomalies   and that's how they stay ahead of the game well  any one anomaly might be a random thing however   if you have enough data you can tell that it's not  so you can see an anomaly that's persisted for a   sufficiently long time so that the probability  of it being uh random is is not high but these   things fade after a while anomalies can get washed  out so you have to keep on top of the business   the firm implemented its new approach in late 1989  where the 27 million dollars Simons have put up   the results were almost immediate and startling  they did more trading than ever cutting medallions   average holding time to just a day and a half  and from a week and a half scoring profits almost   every day the medallion scored a gain of 55.9  percent in 1990 the incredible streak has begun Simons' personal wealth sword he's never  hesitant to pay his employee a lot of money   so Jim Simons has bought a yacht every year  he would bring his employees on his yacht to   all the luxurious places in  the world you can imagine Simons' wanted to have more money to make real  changes to the world he needed to expand his   hedge fund business even more the only way to  do that was getting into the equity business   so far the medallion fund has been very  successful at trading commodities but it   was capped at 10 billion dollars till this day so  when a hedge fund gets big every trade it makes   gets bigger so we have a big trade like  that it takes a long time for it to   execute in the marketplace suppose you're  trying to buy 10 million shares of apple   it's going to take a while for the market to  fill that order and by the time the orders are   filled you might not actually get the price  you originally planned and warren buffet is   having the same problem that's why he's saying  that he's looking for elephants now because   the amount of stocks that he can have are so  few nowadays they created a similar model to   trade equities but it fails to deliver great  returns Simons again knew exactly what to do   he hired two top scientists from IBM and  started tasking them with creating equity models   peter brown and Robert mercer were experts  in natural language processing it took them   more than two years to solve this problem  while their equity models kept losing money   they discovered the reason why the mean  reversion models don't perform as well   is due to the execution of the trade their equity  models were great at picking out best correctly   but they were too unrealistic with the execution  of those trades such as market impact and slippage   so if you treat any stocks you immediately  realize that you do not get the market price   all the time this is the problem with the academia  so whatever paper you read they always assume that   you can get the market price but the market  is a group of buyers and sellers constantly   negotiating prices and if you participate  in that market you do not always get the uh   the market price brown and mercer realized that  their strategy needs to model this aspect as well   and minimize their trading cost once they solve  the problem Ren Tech has entered into a new age   Jim Simons went on a capital raised roadshow and  expected its asset under management to the next   level by 2000 the firm was managing 6 billion  with 140 employees and the rest is history   by 2020 Simons' retired from Ren Tech that year he  made over 1 billion dollars what really separates   Jim Simons apart is his ability to hire talents  and to create an environment that the smartest   people in the world utilize the maximum potential  and more importantly James Simons insisted on   using the scientific method to discover patterns  and anomalies instead of using the gut intuition   it's an open atmosphere everybody  knows what everybody else is doing   and every every week there's a research  meeting if you've had a good idea that you   you think it's going to go somewhere you  present it if it looks good it goes to a   small meeting people vet it more carefully but  there aren't little groups working in the dark   oh this is my little system and I want you to  use it so and that's the best way to do science   I think since Simons' left the firm Ren Tech  has still been beating the market consistently   the fun is so successful almost to a mythical  level but as we now see there is no mystery   behind the firm's success is Jim Simons' ability  to gather talents and also his will to succeed   don't give up I mean now   sometimes is discretion is the better part of  valor and you can just say the hell with it but uh   and go on to something else and that's a decision  that we've all made at one time or another but uh   persistence has a lot of value and something  that's really worthwhile can take a lot of time to   come to fruition and you ought to have patience uh  if you believe in something to uh to stick with it

Channel: FINAiUS

Views: 1,017,127

Keywords: jim simons, quant

Id: lji-jNsXmAM

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020