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It's interesting that the Medallion fund generated an 11.6 percent return during the first six months of this year, lower than the gains of 21 percent and 18 percent during the first halves of 2016 and 2015, respectively. It's also only marginally better than what a passive investment in the SP500 during that same period would have returned.

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That makes sense. The point of investing is not to beat the market in any given year, but to minimize losses. The market in general is doing fantastic right now, so it's hard to beat even for Rennaisance. But when the downturn comes you can bet they'll be ahead of the game.

What makes you confident in this fund in particular vs the rest given that in aggregate they can't beat the market? The history of past returns I assume?

I don't have a source on this but from what I read they returned ~80% in '09.

From the research I've done on them, they generally make tons of very small bets on assets they think are mispriced. Generally speaking, when volatility goes dramatically up is when more assets are mispriced thus leading to larger gains for them. However, we've seen historically low volatility so it makes sense that they're not returning as much right now.

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