Jim Simons’ RenTech fund has fielded over $5 billion of client withdrawals in under 10 weeks, report says

Jim Simons’ RenTech fund has fielded over $5 billion of client withdrawals in under 10 weeks, report says

Renaissance Technologies founder and former chairman Jim Simons. AP Images / Jason Decrow

Jim Simons' Renaissance Technologies has been hit by more than $5 billion in redemptions since December 1, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Simons, a former NSA codebreaker and MIT math professor, founded RenTech in 1982. The firm is now the world's largest quantitative hedge fund with about $60 billion in client assets, and boasts one of the best track records on Wall Street.

Yet its clients withdrew a net $1.85 billion from its three public funds in December. They also asked to withdraw another $1.9 billion in January, and have requested $1.65 billion so far this month, Bloomberg said.

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RenTech's investors are pulling their money after the firm's international equities fund lost 19% in 2020, its institutional diversified alpha fund tumbled 32% over the same period, and its institutional diversified global equities fund slumped 31%.

The trio stomached those losses because they were underhedged when the pandemic tanked markets last spring, and overhedged when asset prices rebounded in the second quarter,