No I think the magic is in the signal detection. Basically, there is only so much alpha in the market. RenTech gets to the signal first and exploits it before everyone else. Thats what makes this so hard. If they all know the same math to figure out where the current signals are, its about who is willing to take the risk of getting into the position before its clear its really a signal.

I used to work on investing using credit card data (which rentech uses). All the hedge funds can access the daily credit card data at the same time. The question is, where there is a huge amount of noise in some pattern in the data, the risk is still high entering a position on it. The fund that models that risk best and says, "when the unique number of credit card spenders at this company goes up, I buy", they make the most.