[w1ntermute]

The most important factor for financial time series forecasting is undoubtedly access to clean data. This is what sets Renaissance apart. There’s no need for particularly sophisticated math - they’ve been doing it for 3 decades.

[throwawaymath]

That's not what sets Renaissance apart. Please don't add to the baseless speculation that gets tossed around about RenTech so often. Are you aware of just how many trading firms have access to phenomenally clean data?

It drives me nuts when I see words like "undoubtedly" thrown around so confidently this way. A new book comes out about Simons and Renaissance, it enters the financial zeitgeist for a little while, and now everyone is apparently an expert on the firm's differentiating competency.

For what it's worth, what you're saying is contradicted by Nick Patterson. He did not say that Renaissance had access to clean data no one else did. What he said is that in the early days, they spent almost all their time cleaning the data. In any case, that's table stakes these days. All successful quant firms spend time sourcing exceptional data and ensuring it's as polished as possible.

[throwlaplace]

>It drives me nuts when I see words like "undoubtedly" thrown around so confidently this way

I see this very often on Reddit and here; someone reads a story and then behaves like they're suddenly a prophet whose job it is to inform the rest of us. On Reddit (because the threads are much bigger) I see this kind of repetition promulgation in the same thread. Here it's typically across threads (as you've noticed). I'll never understand what people get out seeming like an authority figure in a completely anonymous forum.

[apollopower]

If access to clean data was what set Renaissance apart, we'd most likely see other funds/firms do just as well or Renaissance's returns be much lower.

Market data services such as Reuters/Morning Star provide incredibly clean data at great convenience for anything you can imagine, even including astronomical data.

Its kind of like the Black-Scholes model. If it really was that simple and straightforward, everybody would be using it to make a ton of money.

[bob_theslob646]

>Market data services such as Reuters/Morning Star provide incredibly clean data at great convenience for anything you can imagine, even including astronomical data.

Incredibly clean ,that's a very big stretch.

Source: have worked with TR sirca db for almost a decade.

[ackbar03]

Are you sure that's the case? I dunno what background your coming from but I did pretty rigorous statistics in college including time series and stochastic processes and all that. Time series are notoriously difficult to forecast. Arch, garch, starch and all that sound good in theory but are pretty crap in practice

[zkid18]

Could you elaborate the term of "clean financial data" please?

[craze3]

Renaissance? What is that...?

[apollopower]

Renaissance Technologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies

Founded by Jim Simons, the "Father" of quantitative research. The firm is famous for their significant year-over-year returns and notorious for only hiring PhDs from mathematics/physics/computer science.

There is an interesting book on how Jim Simons created the company and built his team of academics from the ground up, "The Man Who Solved the Market"

[zkid18]

Probably Edward Thorp is the "Father" of quantitative research.Since the late 1960s, Thorp has used his knowledge of probability and statistics in the stock market by discovering and exploiting a number of pricing anomalies in the securities markets, and he has made a significant fortune [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_O._Thorp

[craze3]

Oh yes I remember reading this wiki before. I just didn't remember what the company was called. I even tried to research it by googling "renaissance time series prediction," and still couldn't find it.

I don't understand why I was downvoted? I don't think there was enough context for anyone (who's not in the field) to know what you meant, and I thought it would be useful for people like myself to get clued in.