Messages

1

Investors - LC / Re: Is LC no longer interested in retail investors?

« on: February 10, 2019, 05:56:47 AM »

I just emailed this:

Hello

I've been a lending club individual investor for quite a few years now (since 2011) and even though my account is relatively small, worth about $22,000, I have appreciated using your platform and done fairly well, with over 8% ROI consistently.

About a year ago I wound down putting new cash into my account because I realized that you began shutting out retail investors in a major way.

I know well your routine platitudes about how the loans available depend on many factors and go up and down etc etc etc.  But let me state that I'm really sorry to see what was a good company providing a really useful service to average investors and borrowers in an equitable way sell out to the big finance boys. Really disappointing.

I continue to manually put my returns back into new loans, but expect I'll quit doing that someday soon as I'm finding it almost impossible, with your pitiful inventory, to find loans I want to invest in.

2

Investors - LC / Is LC no longer interested in retail investors?

« on: October 07, 2018, 10:00:12 AM »

About a year ago I quit putting more money in and now only manually reinvest what is avaialble--many days there are only 40-60 notes available. Is Lending Club just flat out not interested in individual investors anymore? I don't really follow the news, but that's the impression I am getting. Time to just start taking my cash out as it becomes available?

3

Investors - LC / What percentage of LC loans are made available to retail investors at the start?

« on: March 28, 2018, 01:35:37 PM »

LC says they randomly allocate to retail and institutional investors, but they don't say how much. Anybody have a clue? I'm quite tired of seeing maybe only 50-75 loans available when there use to be thousands. Is LC basically telling retail investors to drop dead?

4

Investors - LC / Re: Investing with Bondora

« on: March 28, 2018, 01:09:16 PM »

I have been putting a little into Bondura since mid 2015 and now have about $6000 there. It's holding steady at 14.4% returns since the beginning until now.

You have to have an EU bank account to invest. Then you will have EU taxes from the country where your bank account is, so for me that means my 14.4% will be taxed at about 40% but that's fine. (Not a problem since those taxes go to healthcare, good transport, safe and clean cities, etc.)

Unlike in the beginning, you can no longer choose your own notes. You give bondora your money and set limits of how much to invest per note (as low as $5 per) and they spread it all out for you with some algorithms they have. So it's really P2P but you give up the control.

5

Investors - LC / Re: Investing with Bondora

« on: March 10, 2018, 06:18:11 AM »

Seeing as it is based in Estonia, when the borrower default does Igor come to their house and break kneecaps?  Is that an extra fee to the lender?

We all know Americans don't get out much (both physically and intellectually), and here we can see an example of why that's really for the best.

6

Investors - P / Re: Worst Month Yet, Prosper Version

« on: December 15, 2017, 03:05:30 PM »

I also quit investing when they nixed the ability to liquidate (even though I never did so and had no plans to), so now twice a month I cash out and switch the funds to LC.

7

Investors - LC / Re: Deadbeats

« on: January 19, 2017, 05:05:28 PM »

Why so many deadbeats out there who take out 25k loans and then don't make one payment and then file for bankruptcy. It's complete bull! Should be a crime and they shouldn't be able to get bankruptcy protection... especially so soon after taking that much cash out on a loan.

how many of those have you had? Of my 1,100 loans i've only had one default without ever making a single payment and i have a hunch their identity was stolen. Ironically, the job title on their application was Deputy Sheriff.

Of 195 defaults from 1617 loans, not one was without a single payment (but four of them only made one payment).

8

Investors - LC / Re: What loan purpose to avoid?

« on: January 19, 2017, 04:31:43 PM »

I have an almost opposite philosophy, and my NAR is at the top of the charts with an average portfolio age of 29.4 months. I figure people trying to refinance crazy credit card debt are the more responsible ones, where those looking to buy a car at the rates LC offers are either not eligible to get a more reasonable rate somewhere else (since car loans can be secured by the auto) or just don't know how the whole system works, so if they're not savvy about that, I don't want to loan them money.

The vast majority of the loans here seem to be for refinancing debt, so of course most of the charge-offs will be too.

It's probably the other filters you should concentrate on.

But FWIW the categories I never invest in are auto loans, medical expenses (walking away from medical obligations is just too ingrained in our culture), mortgage financing help, and "other" since that's just too sketchy in general.

9

Investors - P / Slow Loading Pages

« on: January 19, 2017, 04:14:19 PM »

I'm thinking of getting out of Prosper entirely because it takes FOREVER for the pages to load.

I invest manually with Prosper, have for a few years, because the returns are okay and I like choosing my own loans. I check in a few times a week to buy new loans. I do the same with Lending Club but now realize I've put 4X as much into LC because the process of buying loans on Prosper is so frustrating.

It shouldn't be a huge deal to get the pages to load in a reasonable time.

Anybody else?

10

Investors - LC / Re: only A/B notes available?

« on: September 29, 2015, 11:05:18 AM »

When applying a filter, I see loans that weren't there a few hours ago, but they've only got 7 or 8 days left. Clearly someone is getting early crack at the inventory in a huge way.

11

Investors - LC / Re: I havent seen any "new" 13 day loans in weeks

« on: September 29, 2015, 11:02:17 AM »

No, when I use a filter and new loans show up that weren't there an hour ago but they've only got 7 or 8 days left, clearly someone is getting to the inventory first, and in a major way.

I'm also sensing some bad juju.

12

Investors - P / Re: Prosper Filters not Working?

« on: May 20, 2014, 05:15:33 PM »

Update from Prosper--it turns out the glitch involves having "Prosper Score" as one of my criteria, which I did in all three of my filters. Removing this as a criteria solved the problem. Back to normal now.

13

Investors - P / Re: Prosper Filters not Working?

« on: May 20, 2014, 04:15:23 PM »

I know it's not the restrictiveness of the filters--I tried running on with the only qualification being Prosper Score=3 to 11 and still came up with zero loans returned. Maybe opening a new account will do it, or will try your suggestion, Emmanuel.

14

Investors - P / Prosper Filters not Working?

« on: May 19, 2014, 06:35:42 PM »

For a couple of months, my Prosper filters have been not working at all, always yielding zero results. I wrote to ask about it and first time received no reply, then about two weeks ago wrote again and was told it is a "known issue" and they are working on it. But still, nothing. I've quit adding funds and now thinking about slowly taking my money out--this does not inspire confidence and I am having to take the time to peruse notes one by one to consider buying them. I don't see this topic being discussed anywhere--is anyone else having this problem?