HN user
Kids also help ease existential dread. Life is big and heavy, even without kids. And I think these days, lots of people try and find purpose through their work (forgoing or delaying kids), but I’m not sure that‘s the most direct path. Kids answer the big question of “why am I here” in a way that nothing else can. I often wonder if we’re programmed for it to be so.
While I understand there are moral and ethical complications with the vast sums of wealth and influence attached to RenTec, the tone in these comments is disappointing...
There is no fraud at RenTec, and there is nothing magical about what they do. It's simply an amazing technical and scientific organization, operating with almost unthinkable efficiency and scale.
I haven't read the book, but I'm pretty sure this isn't in it: I've been told by reliable sources that if you pick any one strategy (however you are able to separate/define that) from the Medallion portfolio and it will not be individually remarkable--probably less than a 1.0 Sharpe (net of trading costs, gross of fees). There are countless hedge funds with equally performant models and sub-strategies.
What makes RenTec different is their ability to generate orthogonal strategies at a remarkable scale. They generate more ideas with less philosophical and empirical overlap than anyone else, by a wide margin. The software and theory required to do this for a fund as large as Medallion is absolutely as rare and valuable as their returns have proven.
Wrote more about it here: https://www.bridgealternatives.com/medallion-isnt-magic-prob...