James Simons posted 36 percent average annualized net return since he launched the quant-based fund in 1988.
 Simons earned an estimated $2.8 billion in 2007, $1.7 billion in 2006, $1.5 billion in 2005 and $670 million in 2004.

Jim Simons received his PhD  in mathematics at the age of 23.

We are a research organization. We look for people who have demonstrated the ability to do first-class research. We have very high standards and it works. Our business is wonderful as a result.

We hire people to make mathematical models of the markets in which we invest. Most come out of academia.

Some of the work is purely mathematical, like designing better ways to develop algorithms of one sort or another, or to maximize some utility function. Some of the work is really scientific. It's looking at a lot of data and really looking for what underlies that data. There we hire people who are experimental physicists or astronomers.

First and foremost, we look for people capable of doing good science, on the research side, or they are excellent computer scientists in architecting good programs.

I miss the more relaxed tone of things, the constant intellectual stimulation of just being with very bright people all the time. Now we have a lot of very bright people in our company, so I get some of that.

In August 2005 he launched the Renaissance Institutional Equity Fund, a long-short product that invests exclusively in equities and has a longer holding period for its securities than does frenetic Medallion. By maintaining a net exposure to the market of 100 percent, RIEF has been popular among institutional investors looking for higher returns from their traditional equity allocation.