If Medallion managed much more money, Simons, Henry Laufer, and others were convinced that its performance—still tied to various short-term price fluctuations—would suffer. The size limit meant Medallion sometimes identified more market aberrations and phenomena than it could put to use. The discarded trading signals usually involved longer-term opportunities. Simons’s scientists were more confident about short-term signals, partly because more data was available to help confirm them. A one-day trading signal can incorporate data points for every trading day of the year, for instance, while a
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