Making big and quick money on stocks and shares.

jamesd

bigadaj wrote: »

A bloke has been sacked at a small start up firm apparently, when their loans are 'not they are all cracked up to be' - is that poor quality, non existent or what?

LendingClub is not a small startup. It's a massive founding player in the US market, much like a larger version of Zopa, that has been the largest in the US by loan amounts.

There are two broad problems that happened there:

1. a senior vice president told an employee to change $22 million of loan details so it appeared that they had changed terms that had been required by a large investment firm before they would invest, which was done by changing the reported date of issuance so they appeared to the investor to be after the change of terms had happened. The employee told the CEO and founder, who the board says did not properly inform them. The employee who was told to do this is believed still to be with the firm, having done as expected in this situation. The senior vice president says his instruction was misunderstood. The board did not consider that the founder and CEO had informed them of what was happening as well as he should.

2. the founder and CEO did not disclose a personal investment in a firm that he said Lending Club should invest in.

As a result of both incidents the funder and CEO was first replaced as chairman of the board buy a former chairman of the Visa card firm, then later told by the board that he had 24 hours to resign or else he'd be fired.

The firm has been told to provide testimony at a grand jury and there seems to be a significant chance that criminal charges will be forthcoming.

Meanwhile the share price of the firm has dropped by 40%+ and the firm has said that it is going to restate its results last year to remove a statement that it believes its financial controls were appropriate and replace it by one saying they weren't. The senior vice president and two other employees were fired.

It's useful to read Inside the Final Days of LendingClub CEO Renaud Laplanche.

jamesd

Thrugelmir wrote: »

A recent timely reminder.

Yes, it's worth remembering that publicly listed firms can have individuals employees and even senior officers who at inappropriately. See such things as the emissions cheating that's been going on in the car industry. Size and being publicly listed can have value but it is far from a guarantee, as we also saw in the case of Swedish listed P2P lender TrustBuddy.

A useful reminder also that the loans were being packaged to be sold to an investment firm, not consumers, and the issue at hand was that the loan terms were to have been changed to allow LendingClub to act even if all lenders did not agree.

For background on that see the Argentinian debt problem that has recently been resolved, when a requirement for agreement from all lenders frustrated settlement plans for a long time. Terms to prevent this are now becoming standard.

bowlhead99

bigadaj wrote: »

lawriejones1 wrote: »

I suppose this is the classic media misrepresentation that people can make lots of money easily without working that hard for it. Reality is, you can't.

What like Facebook and Google?

Are you suggesting it was easy to create Google and keep it where it is, and that the people didn't work hard to do so?

Don't see too many Goldman Sachs bankers sweating either?

Well, you do hear about the 12-18 hour days which are stereotypical for investment bankers and you can usually rely on the big banks for at least one high profile suicide a year due to the extreme pressure and stress that the jobs can demand.

But hey, if they're not lifting bricks in the sun all day they won't be breaking a sweat, so it's probably an easy life because you can do it from a desk.

alexadams88

It can be done and is very much possible but the risks is higher as well. So we need to be extra cautious trading stock market. How about forex? Have you tried that? The gbp/jpy pair that's a great pair that match your preference.

grey_gym_sock

bigadaj had the wrong examples, but you can certainly make lots of money with no effort: inherit it. this is becoming a more common source of wealth, as wealth becomes more concentrated, and as the super-wealthy opt out of paying tax via panama-style schemes.

AFAICR, in 1 list of the richest americans, about 4 of the top 10 were walmart heirs.

grey_gym_sock

alexadams88 wrote: »

It can be done and is very much possible but the risks is higher as well. So we need to be extra cautious trading stock market. How about forex? Have you tried that? The gbp/jpy pair that's a great pair that match your preference.

that's very bad advice. trading forex is a zero-sum game (even before costs) - it's just gambling.

george4064

alexadams88 wrote: »

It can be done and is very much possible but the risks is higher as well. So we need to be extra cautious trading stock market. How about forex? Have you tried that? The gbp/jpy pair that's a great pair that match your preference.

Yeah, don't do forex unless you want to lose money or you're a forex specialist.

bigadaj

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

bigadaj had the wrong examples, but you can certainly make lots of money with no effort: inherit it. this is becoming a more common source of wealth, as wealth becomes more concentrated, and as the super-wealthy opt out of paying tax via panama-style schemes.

AFAICR, in 1 list of the richest americans, about 4 of the top 10 were walmart heirs.

You are correct and inheritance is still the best way of gaining wealth.

However my examples were just that, but my point was more of perspective. The Internet examples particularly were more aimed at what do people define as work, for most people it's doing soemthing for a significant part of their life to earn money to pay for food, mortgage etc

That's the reality for millions, but many of the wealthy have done something they genuinely enjoy and become wealthy as a result, or to an extent a byproduct.

grey_gym_sock

bigadaj wrote: »

You are correct and inheritance is still the best way of gaining wealth.

However my examples were just that, but my point was more of perspective. The Internet examples particularly were more aimed at what do people define as work, for most people it's doing soemthing for a significant part of their life to earn money to pay for food, mortgage etc

That's the reality for millions, but many of the wealthy have done something they genuinely enjoy and become wealthy as a result, or to an extent a byproduct.

it's certainly fortunate to be able to make money doing something you enjoy.

it's also fortunate to be paid a lot per hour - you can work hard for a few years, and save enough that work becomes optional, which changes the nature of work for you, even if you do choose to keep working.

in both tech startups and banking, many jobs are (as bowlhead said) for very long hours, so you do need to factor that in. some ppl are stuffing about twice as many working hours into a year as a "normal" full-time job. so the pay-off is not quite as good per hour.

the opportunity to compress a lot of work into a short time may be useful, when people are young and can cope with working long hours. or it may be a disaster, ruining their family life.

in any case, a highly-paid long-hours job clearly beats a minimum-wage (or less - via zero-hours contracts, or working for benefits) long-hours job (or multiple jobs).

Zola.

Sounds like the road to bankruptcy, unless your name is Gordon Gecko