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November 27, 2007

Renaissance Capital: Fascinating Jim Simons Profile

There is a massive (5,859 words, if you must now) profile in Bloomberg of Jim Simons, the secretive founder of storied Renaissance Technologies. Simons' uber-quant fund has more than doubled assets in the last year, to in excess of $30-billion.

Read the whole thing; it's fascinating stuff. Really ... even if Simons is a bit elliptical on how his funds work.

The wise-cracking Simons himself is mum on virtually all of its details.

What can he say about Medallion's trading strategy?

``Not much,'' Simons says with a chortle, and then takes a drag on one of the Merit cigarettes he often smokes.

What kind of instruments does it trade?

``Everything.''

How many different strategies does it use?

``A lot.''

Simons says his Ph.D.s laugh when they read the far-fetched theories about what their fund might be doing. One chat room participant speculated that Renaissance uses audio hookups to futures exchanges and analyzes the noise from the pits with voice-recognition software.

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