> This is mostly true, but there are exceptions (e.g. Renaissance Technologies).

Nope.

Let me guess: you listened to The Man Who Solved the Market and think RenTech uses/used unpublished frontier mathematics to predict the market.

There are plenty of firms with both higher annual % returns (consistently over 15-20 years) and higher absolute $ returns than RenTech/Medallion fund, especially post-2010. And they’re not using “frontier mathematics”.

A lot of alpha comes from how well you know the VP at the exchange. Not math. Not tech. But good ol’ politics.

Don’t like a market participant? Tell the exchange to issue violations to that participant. Get them banned for a few months.

Fat fingered a trade with wrong price or quantity? The exchange can and does undo a trade after the fact. All in the name of “orderly markets”. Similar to when governments use “national security” as an excuse.