Page 24 - GoldenOne

GoldenOne
The first day that Mercer walked into Renaissance, he felt an omnipresence, as if Renaissance were a living being and he were bonded to its soul. This company was designed by Simons using his mathematical and computer brilliance. It was clear to Mercer that once you were allowed in, you were never allowed out.
Renaissance had three core Simons’ principles:
• maximum earnings
• maximum loyalty
• maximum secrecy
To Mercer, Simons became everything: leader, father, mentor, friend, and confidant.
In the beginning, Renaissance attracted the biggest and best institutional investors with the promise of huge returns on their investment, based on the huge profits that Renaissance showed on their financial statements.
Investors came on board because they believed in Simons’ mathematical method. The problem was, the methods did not work, and Simons was lying to them. His computer algorithms were nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Many expert investors suffered from the illusion that mathematical formulas could accurately predict market behavior.
In reality, the large trading profits claimed by Renaissance were lies. Since the company was private, their records were not public information. They attributed their claimed high profits to their computer programs, combined with data inputs from people with Ph.D. degrees. No one was allowed to
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