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Comment by questinthrow | Hacker News Reader

While mister Simons might not be the best example, I sometimes feel that you can easily beat the market if you are well connected and have access to information that can move the markets before anyone else. For example how much know-how do you need to beat the market if you're a US senator? You know before anyone else what's going to happen regarding policy and can plan accordingly. There were rumours about this even regarding Simons' Medallion fund. About how all the talk about math and algorithms was just a red herring to divert from the fact that it was mostly insider knowledge that did the heavy lifting. Alas these rumours were never confirmed as far as I know.

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"There are 3 ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter or cheat" - Margin Call

it would seem like RenTec is the first two

You have no clue, sorry. Insider trading cannot generate the consistency and returns as RenTec does. Even insider traders lose money if the market does not react as expected.

There are tons of strategies out there that does not involve insider trading or fraud. One such example is simply shorting Bitcoin at the market open whilst going long QQQ. This has paid a lot , like today , in which Bitcoin is down 3% and QQQ down a tad. There are people running this strategy now which despite being public knowledge, is still profitable. Shorting bitcoin during market hours, in fact, realizes all of the downside of Bitcoin without the upside from shorting it.

There are other strategies like this. now imagine you assemble the greatest minds in the world and tons of computing power to find many strategies and run them 24-7.

Whether it’s a scam or not, I’ve seen a couple .onion sites for trading insider knowledge. You have to tell something to get in.

Beating the S&P 500 is difficult and there are now zero fee funds to mimic it.

Big funds usually dont try to beat the market, they try to dampen volaility while tracking the S&P 500

even small funds, this was the investment thesis at the hedgefund that my dad worked for circa 2006-2008. they promised super dampened volatility but, as you might guess, they went belly up during the great recession.

The cause? Someone, somewhere in their financial product chain was not being faithful about the volatility of the asset they were basing their whole model on so when the market went tits up they did to.

yeah. 'market neutrality' often means misplaced/unseen risk elsewhere

It is difficult but doable. most people would be better served to not try.

One can make any sort of outlandish claim, but there's little point in giving undue attention to entirely baseless speculation.

That kind of theory is the same as chemtrails are real.

Insider trading exists but the amount of secrecy to make that theory a reality would be unobtainable.

There are US senators that make millions by using their spouses as intermediaries to buy and sell shares. Insider trading as a crime only exists for those that are not well connected enough

I am not denying small cash is being made like that. I am referring to the argument that the Medallion fund was a purely a play on insider trading.

Those senators just trade on their own behalf because its not illegal to.

Why would they involve their spouse? If it was illegal for them to trade but their spouse made a trade it would be trivial for the SEC to trace it back to intel they learned.

It is illegal. https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/senate-bill/203...

You are right that enforcement is weak, but that is not because it is legal. The notion that members of Congress can legally trade on knowledge derived from or used in the performance of their duties has not been true for over a decade at this point.

https://campaignlegal.org/update/stock-act-failed-effort-sto...

No congress can trade on insider information full stop

https://blogs.luc.edu/compliance/?p=4459

> Simply put, insider trading is illegal. But, if you are a member of Congress, there is a loophole. Members of Congress and their families are allowed to trade stocks with almost no limitations. There isn’t a limit on lawmakers trading stocks based on classified information nor is there oversight regarding the trades that lawmakers are allowed to make based on other information they are privy to as part of their job. This is in glaring contrast to the strict insider trading laws that ban the same kind of behavior of everyone else in the county.

Did he put a lot of money into politics or did he stay away from it?

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