To get a sense of how fast these annual returns compound, Cornell has concluded that $100 invested in 1988 would be worth almost $400 million in 2018. This fund has posted annual returns of 98% after fees in 2000 during the dot-com crash and 82% after fees in 2008 during the Great Recession, which indicates that it actually hedges against risk, unlike most other high-returning investment vehicles.
I think 2000 and 2008 were actually its best years, see this graph, and the post I got it from.
Abstract from the Cornell paper:
The performance of Renaissance Technologies’ Medallion fund provides the ultimate counterexample to the hypothesis of market efficiency. Over the period from the start of trading in 1988 to 2018, $100 invested in Medallion would have grown to $398.7 million, representing a compound return of 63.3%. Returns of this magnitude over such an extended period far outstrip anything reported in the academic literature. Furthermore, during the entire 31-year period, Medallion never had a negative return despite the dot.com crash and the financial crisis. Despite this remarkable performance, the fund’s market beta and factor loadings were all negative, so that Medallion’s performance cannot be interpreted as a premium for risk bearing. To date, there is no adequate rational market explanation for this performance.
I think 2000 and 2008 were actually its best years, see this graph, and the post I got it from.
Abstract from the Cornell paper: