Peer-to-peer lending sites: MSE guide discussion

masonic

jamesd wrote: »

At those prices they would expect and get some sales from time to time. It's the sort of price I use when happy with the loan but interested in selling if the price is right.

Not when there is already a large number of lower offers on the system that would all have to be bought first.

There's a long history of that in P2P markets, going back to the days of Zopa circa 2008 where it was called easteregging after the person who popularised it. Back then there was a regular monthly cycle with prices higher at the end of the month. So you'd get higher rates at the end of the month. But because loans were filled from low price to high you'd find that a big loan would go further up the range of interest rates to get filled. And you could benefit from that by having some higher rate offers. The working rates also varied throughout the year so you'd need to adjust and perhaps change the high ones to lower.

What happened in this instance is on the day the bad news became known, people rushed to list at lower prices and those higher offers were exploited to give some people a competitive edge over others. What should have happened is all orders should have been cancelled or the market suspended for a couple of days so that people would be on a level playing field. But it would have needed to affect all connected loans, which was a large proportion of the total market.

Just after the secondary market is enabled or just after a payment is made on an amortising loan is made are good times to try out the higher prices, since the working prices haven't yet been established. So no surprise at all that you'd notice them appearing then and perhaps staying around for a long time if the seller was in no hurry.

Seems that you don't really understand the reason for those prices being that they do get matched at times and it's useful to offer at any price, since that adds depth to the market.

The prices that might less often get matched, or where there wasn't much interest in selling, would be around the maximum permitted 110% with an offer to sell a penny or maybe a Pound. Low amounts like those can also be used to monitor the market to see what prices work before jumping in with more money. Changing those offers to higher amounts might reasonably be described as using the first to list rule for queue jumping.

I'll grant you the amortising loans are different because offers are cancelled after a month, so this exploitation behaviour is somewhat inhibited.

There were specific instances of exploitation discussed over in the P2PIF. The change that was implemented prevents those who want to speculatively list at a high price (with a large buffer of lower offers) and are in no hurry from using that speculative listing from leveraging an advantage when they subsequently are in a hurry and competing against others who are in a hurry.

Ablrate wrote about plans to change several years ago. Loans getting in trouble is a time when it wouldn't make much difference because of the large downward price pressure that swamps the queue position benefit. At least until the price reaches the lowest permitted 75%.

It made quite a bit of difference because those people who threw their towels over the sun lounger at a high price (where lower offers 'protect' them from accidental sales) didn't need to improve on the best offer to get to the front of the queue, they just had to match it.

Trying queue position things when a loan is in trouble is a great way to get yourself a loan that you can't sell even at 75% because there are no longer willing buyers. It's the time to go clearly below the current price so your price looks like a bargain before selling pressure pushes the rest of the market there and lower. Take 99% or 95% if you really want out, before the crowd agrees with you that those prices are good, not bad.

What happened was more of a landslide than a cliff-edge, but what was unfair was that one person would list at say 96%, then others would queue jump them at the same rate instead of being made to list their parts at 95.9% if they wanted to get ahead in the queue. This made the market more expensive for buyers like me and also meant that those willing to enter the market to provide competition were at a disadvantage to those who were unwilling to drop their price, but for the entry of these new sellers.

What I observed when trying to sell is that I'd list at say 98%, then someone else would match my offer, but jump ahead of me in the queue, so I'd drop to 97.9, 97.8, 97.6, 97.5, 97.4, 97.3, 97.2, 97.1, 97.0 etc (taking twice the amount of activity that it should to get down to that price) what should have happened is I list at 98%, then have to beat a better offer, so drop to 97.8, 97.6, 97.4, 97.2, 97.0 etc. If someone just wants to stay ahead of me in the queue at all costs I'd rather find that out sooner rather than later.

And when wanting to buy, in some instances I'd need to offer some loan for sale at a lower price, to gradually walk sellers down to a lower price before cancelling my offer and buying their parts at the reduced price - a price that they were no doubt willing to sell at, but had no incentive to reach before I turned up. On at least one occasion this end price was equivalent to a bid I'd previously made that attracted zero activity from sellers and I'd withdrawn.

All a lot of unnecessary work to achieve the same end result.

When I'm paying attention I like to have almost all of my lent money offered for sale. Most of it will probably be at the prices you think make no sense, because I like the loans and am not interested in selling cheap, only if I like the price.

None of this would actually matter but Ablrate partly broke their market when they changed the price increment from 0.001% to 0.1%. With the previous price increment if you didn't like being behind someone at 100% you'd just go to 99.999% and be best price. If they didn't like that they could go to 99.998 (if they liked the price) or 99.99 or 99.9 if they wanted it to hurt you more to match them. So it was usually price that set what sold first. With the big steps they have now, people are more reluctant to take the price hit so it quite often works like a queue. Which is why queue position started to matter instead of being largely irrelevant.

Just to give some context, when I'm active in the Ablrate market my annualised trade volume is around the million Pounds a year mark. You may be one of the few that come close but your posts suggest that you didn't understand what was happening and why as well.

I'm ambivalent towards the 0.1% step size, on the one hand it would make the old system fairer to have a smaller step size, but on the other it would take a lot of screen time to monitor your offers and update them when someone else is active and determined to undercut you by 0.001%. As a net buyer, I like the system as it is because the 'best' offer is reached with the least amount of work from competing sellers, so sellers are less likely to give up on competition because they feel they are wasting time in front of their screen.

I don't have a great deal of turnover on the SM, but do use it to buy when there are dips, preferring it to the primary market for some loans. I only sell when I'm in need of funds to invest in newer loans (that's rare - I currently have 25% of my IF ISA balance flexibly withdrawn due to lack of loans), or when new information comes to light and I feel I'm overexposed. I'm not just going on my own observations when buying and selling above, but also others' observations when selling, and Ablrate's comments. I don't think I misunderstood what was happening although I accept not everyone was listing at high prices for the same reason.

jamesd wrote: »

Perhaps in some ways but here are a couple where we might agree.

A. Someone has been using automation to trade mistakes faster than you can correct them. So when they are active you can see things like this:

1. hit the wrong button and place an offer at the best bid price instead of a bid
2. almost immediately a round number buy will happen
3. shortly after that a second buy for any odd amount will happen
4. if the price is even 0.1% different neither happens

B. Ablrate hits bidders by announcing bad news and leaving the market open. As soon as those emails start to be opened readers can sell to the bids before the person who placed the bid has a chance to react and use a price that reflects the new state of the loan.

Yes bots and failure to suspend the market on delivery of price-sensitive information are both things that annoy me also.

There are two reasons I don't often use bids. This is the first, and the second is that it requires me to have sufficient cash on the platform to cover all of the bids I make.

Nardge

The above discussion between Jamesd and Masonic has mostly flown over my head...

I conclude that considerable time and effort must be spent assessing, investing in, and later selling loans with the likes of Moneything, Ablrate, and other such similar platforms… Presumably this is only worthwhile when you know both what you're doing and have exceedingly large amounts of money to involve...

For everyone else auto-diversification may be the way forward...

With Kind Regards

masonic

Nardge wrote: »

The above discussion between Jamesd and Masonic has mostly flown over my head...

I conclude that considerable time and effort must be spent assessing, investing in, and later selling loans with the likes of Moneything, Ablrate, and other such similar platforms… Presumably this is only worthwhile when you know both what you're doing and have exceedingly large amounts of money to involve...

For everyone else auto-diversification may be the way forward...

The selling part is entirely optional, and can be a useful way to reduce the risk providing there are others willing to buy what you list for sale.

The assessing part is much more important. Even if you can screen out just the most egregious loans and borrowers, it will likely have a significant impact on your returns. It might not seem so now when platforms are young and we are in the favourable part of the market cycle, but as Warren Buffett says "only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked".

bxboards

Nardge wrote: »

Good afternoon,

Please find enclosed the link to 4th Way's CEO list of top 7 Property ISAs!
I believe his thoughts should count for something...

https://www.4thway.co.uk/candid-opinion/top-property-ifisas/?utm_source=4thWay%20News%20and%20Tips&utm_campaign=28e41a9c58-Newsletter_54&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_415f2326f1-28e41a9c58-583091249

Since we've started a new Tax Year, and I'm already diversified through Ratesetter, Zopa, Funding Circle, Growth Street, Lending Crowd, Assetz Capital, Octopus Choice, Kuflink, and now Lending Works, I wished to find other firms to further spread the £50,000 about.

From the CEO's list, I'm already with two firms of choice (highlighted red above), Landbay pay a pittance and I'll thus avoid, leaving CapitalRise, CrowdProperty, Proplend, and LoanPad as potential candidates.

The things I'm looking for are:

• Good Reputation
• Size and Age (these will be small and young though I presume)
• Higher Interest Bracket (than those currently invested in)
• Autodiversification
• Secondary Market
• Flexibility
• Free Transfer In
• Free Transfer Out

If you have anything negative to say vis-à-vis these potential new firms, I'd be grateful to hear!

With Kind Regards

Your list is uncannily close to mine - the only one in your top list I'm not with is Zopa.

I do invest in others - Ablrate are good and they seem to be about the only 10%+ platform that is'nt keeling over under defaults - they are the first "pie in the sky" rate site I've touched, having made judicious use of my bargepole for the obvious suspects!

I opened an account with Crowdproperty very recently, actually when they introduced the auto-invest feature, as my DD time is somewhat restricted lately. But obviously too early for comments so far.

I'm considering Loanpad too, they look fine to me so far, but I'm not there on my due diligence on Loanpad, although no red flags so far.

I'm REALLY top heavy in Assetz Capital at the moment due to the recent crazy 1% / 2% offers and am looking to rehome a very large chunk shortly.

If you join Loanpad, would be keen to hear how you go after you've used it for a few months.

keyboardworrier

I am tempted by Loanpad too ,especially with the current 2% TCB/Quidco offer which is for opening an IFISA.

agent69

bxboards wrote: »

I'm REALLY top heavy in Assetz Capital at the moment due to the recent crazy 1% / 2% offers and am looking to rehome a very large chunk shortly.

I thought the 1% / 2% bonus was time related. How are you going to rehome your money without losing the bonus?

bxboards

agent69 wrote: »

I thought the 1% / 2% bonus was time related. How are you going to rehome your money without losing the bonus?

Hi!

That's the million dollar question.

So I have money in the 90ACC account, which I can't withdraw until I think the end of May, then the money will be with me 90 days later. (1% bonus)

And last year they did 1% / 2% and I can't access that until mid-June -ish (Christmas cracker promo?) + 30 days.

(Yes, I know I CAN withdraw but silly to with bonuses at risk)

So ideally it would be nice to off-load some or all of that Assetz dosh, and as Keyboardworrier mentioned Loanpad, something like that would great to go over tie over to another promo. Or move to Crowdproperty is another option (Rates looks better than Loanpad?) but I'd end up top-heavy in that then.

But it's whether the offers are still running, when I need to access.

Obviously I will need to move it anyway, but I'd be happy to try something different from RS, or usual suspects. A bonus would be a nice bonus!

Hope that makes sense, just woken up!

AdrianC

Remember: Anybody can sue anybody for anything at any time. Facts, reality and snowball's-chances-in-hell are not required. Just some money for legal fees and a pair of brass cojones.

masonic

AdrianC wrote: »

Remember: Anybody can sue anybody for anything at any time. Facts, reality and snowball's-chances-in-hell are not required. Just some money for legal fees and a pair of brass cojones.

Did somebody post about the latest litigious borrower of a certain platform where things aren't bolted down and get their post removed?

Guru86

Hi all, I have a little bit of money to invest a month from MB.

Looking at an ISA with P2P lending. Just looking for some recommendations for the companies, I am thinking either ratesetter or Zopa?

Do I need to invest an amount each month or can I miss a month if no spare cash from the MB?

Thank You.