It's a trivial statement since many equities are correlated on a multidimensional manifold of characteristics. Jim Simons was just early and now rentech is nothing special.
This reads like “Newton or Einstein were just early”. That’s the whole thing, being the first person to do it.
Whether something is implemented on Jan 1 or Jan 15 is irrelevant to the grand scheme of things
If you only live your lifetime from Jan 1 to Jan 15, it matters a great deal.
Rentec is still world renowned after pioneering the quant business 40+ years ago. I don't think the rested on their laurels with some easy thing that they just stumbled on early