This whole debate posing Buffet, Soros, Druck etc against Simons is completely comparing apples to oranges. You have one group that is making long term economically-based directional trades in effectively infinite markets. Their only real constraints are their imagination, risk tolerance, and how much money they can get investors to give them. Then you have another group that is making short term quantitative trades based on specific markets, often with inherently limited depth. Here you have an entirely different constraint that arises: the market itself. If you trade small caps, you know your participation in a market can affect the market itself. If you size up too large relative to the period volume, your trades are going to move the market — both the entry and the exit — sometimes to a degree that might actually make an otherwise profitable trade unprofitable. That’s why most small cap traders limit their size to a percentage of volume. The same is true with Simons/Rentec. He was so good at mastering market dynamics that the size of the market itself was the only thing limiting his returns. He effectively beat the game, staying limit up on his strategy for the majority of his career. As I hope you can see, the whole argument of capped AUM invalidating % returns is just silly. Simons identified a game and played that game so well, the only constraint was the scale of the game itself. It’s clearly not a very legitimate argument to hold his prowess against him. This doesn’t take anything away from what other economic traders do; it’s just a different game with different constraints. Just like you can’t really rank a golfer against a linebacker, don’t think it’s appropriate to rank economic investors against quantitative traders.