So it's Saturday morning and it's the 9 AM (EST) feeding at LC. I've been watching a note that I was quick enough to grab, to monitor its progress to full funding. It's an E4, fits my criteria nearly perfect, and it being early Saturday morning on a holiday weekend, I feel lucky to have gotten this note before the whales devoured it. I was very quick to nab it, literally seconds after it hit the platform, and sure enough, it had completely disappeared from the platform the second I rechecked for it, after I had made my purchase though. I then went to my cache of purchased notes and of course saw that it hadn't been fully funded yet even though it's no longer listed on the platform. When I clicked on that note to see what progress it was making, I noticed that only 9 others besides me were lucky enough to get their hooks into it. Now this is a $14,600 note, so that seemed like very few investors for that size. Sure enough, it was only 4.28% funded, yet no longer available on the platform. I kept checking back on it to see its progress, 2 more had joined the ranks of ownership, now up to 5.14%, about 5 minutes after it disappeared from the public platform. So as I was jumping around to watch this note, it did resurface again on the platform - ah ha... it lasted about 1 minute there and I watched as a few more people jumped in, now up to 16.44% by 27 people. And then poof, the note was gone again. I checked my cache for that note again, 44 ppl on board, but now 52% funded. It then sat in my account for another 20 - 25 minutes, stuck at around that 52% mark until it finally fully funded with a total of 48 ppl. So exactly $7,000 (nearly half) of it sat unfunded from the very beginning until the end. I doubt there was a small investor grabbing that note, locking $7,000 of it out from the platform, and then finally funding it. To me it looks like there were 2 whales in this note and 46 small fish.
I've seen this same thing going on with $35,000 notes also, so its whales (institutions) in my opinion that are locking these notes out from the small investors. Only lucky (or maybe skilled) handfuls of small fish manage to get a bite of them. I have other notes in my cache waiting for issuance, large denomination notes, where only 20 ppl or so got their teeth into it. You have to be really fast these days when competing with these intuitions, especially when they seem to be playing dirty. So it seems the whales have not only been invading the pond, but they are dominating it and pooping in it. We need a new pond.