Do I have this right?

[rawraw]

You could invest in As and get the same return as investing in Fs.

In its literal meaning, this statement would be counterintuitive.  Perhaps you mean that the returns of As and Fs loans are on the security market line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_market_line), rather than around it?

I'm confused by that statement as well
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

[core]

Very interesting thread. I don't understand why a large investor would find it advantageous to lock up notes in a cart only to throw many back a short time later. Does this imply a human analyst in the middle? Why would their model / buy time be slower than Bryce's who said he often gets the first note?

When seconds count, it could definitely have an advantage even with no human intervention.  From an automation standpoint, you can lock up hundreds of notes with one request.  Once they're locked, then the bot can fetch the details for each and decide what to keep.   It's not about processing time per se, but minimizing the number of network requests before you've captured the notes.  Eliminating even one hit results in a substantial time savings because of how long it takes LC to respond.  Multiply that by tonnes of notes and you've got a huge time advantage.

[viking]

Even 5 minutes after the scheduled release time, I am seeing enough new loans available.

8/29 8:35PM New loans added to DB = 11
8/29 6:20PM New loans added to DB = 13
8/29 6:05PM New loans added to DB = 58
8/29 3:05PM New loans added to DB = 18
8/29 2:35PM New loans added to DB = 6
8/29 2:20PM New loans added to DB = 17
8/29 2:05PM New loans added to DB = 78
8/29 1:05PM New loans added to DB = 1
8/29 12:05PM New loans added to DB = 1
8/29 10:21AM New loans added to DB = 9
8/29 10:06AM New loans added to DB = 62
8/29 07:51AM New loans added to DB = 1
8/29 06:35AM New loans added to DB = 12
8/29 06:20AM New loans added to DB = 21
8/29 06:05AM New loans added to DB = 61
8/29 05:35AM New loans added to DB = 3
8/29 02:05AM New loans added to DB = 8
8/29 01:50AM New loans added to DB = 1

With "new", would that include any notes released from a hold in the shopping cart?

[Dennis]

The interesting thing in all this is that institutions are not only swallowing all the whole loans, but now they seem to be invading and dominating the partial loan platform also.  Of course I can't prove that, but there does seem to be evidence of that.  So as institutions may now be dominating P2P, how on earth does Lending Club market their company for an IPO.  What the company is/was founded on, P2P, seems to be a broken model now.  And how do you market a broken model but still convince future stock holders that what the business was founded on is sound?  I would think the SEC would also have something to say about full disclosure if LC tries to market themselves as a P2P company.  It kind of puts LC in a confused bind, IMHO.

[yojoakak]

...But in a way it is achieving what LC should be doing, spreading out availability of loans. Even 5 minutes after the scheduled release time, I am seeing enough new loans available.

What a great idea! Kind of a like a Public Service to all us slow humans.

[Bilgefisher]

One thing is for certain, reading each note prior to purchase is a thing of the past.  Doesn't matter anyway since you can't ask the borrowers questions.  With that in mind, why not use a quick invest type setup where all users get an equal shot at there preselected criteria.  LC can still have their whole loan program, and all the retail investors get an equal opportunity to invest in the remainder loans without competing API's.

I suppose I'm missing a key big picture item, but it seems like fairly simple way to give folks equal shots a loan and the ability to invest without being a clock watching speed clicker.  Just like prosper, I now have money piling up that is not being invested.

[Rob L]

From an automation standpoint, you can lock up hundreds of notes with one request...

I understand what you are saying perfectly. I'm not personally certain this is correct (i.e. I haven't implemented the method). It's possibly correct, maybe even probably correct but I would need some time and research to know for sure. I have my doubts but it would explain a lot.

[AnilG]

The listed new loan added data will include all loans that were not present in last update. So it will include both loans that were released from shopping carts as well as released by Lending Club since the last update.

Even 5 minutes after the scheduled release time, I am seeing enough new loans available.

8/29 8:35PM New loans added to DB = 11
8/29 6:20PM New loans added to DB = 13
8/29 6:05PM New loans added to DB = 58
8/29 3:05PM New loans added to DB = 18
8/29 2:35PM New loans added to DB = 6
8/29 2:20PM New loans added to DB = 17
8/29 2:05PM New loans added to DB = 78
8/29 1:05PM New loans added to DB = 1
8/29 12:05PM New loans added to DB = 1
8/29 10:21AM New loans added to DB = 9
8/29 10:06AM New loans added to DB = 62
8/29 07:51AM New loans added to DB = 1
8/29 06:35AM New loans added to DB = 12
8/29 06:20AM New loans added to DB = 21
8/29 06:05AM New loans added to DB = 61
8/29 05:35AM New loans added to DB = 3
8/29 02:05AM New loans added to DB = 8
8/29 01:50AM New loans added to DB = 1

With "new", would that include any notes released from a hold in the shopping cart?

[AnilG]

Purpose of browser bot will be to make transactions in a Lending Club account. It is very different problem from forum spam. In this case you can separate humans from browser bots by watching the activity within a Lending Club Account. Humans don't log  into their account and make transactions every few minutes for hours. Put a threshold on attempted logins/transactions within a time frame for an account and time-delay the transactions/login for that account if threshold exceeded. Will make most browser bots irrelevant.

Anyone can put his browser behind a proxy server and watch the conversations between LC server and the browser.  With enough skills and diligence, anyone can design such program that LC server cannot tell the difference whether it is talking to a browser or to a bot.

Agreed, there's absolutely no way to tell the difference.  If you could, there wouldn't be captchas and comment/forum spam all over the net. You don't need a man in the middle to do so, and with this stuff being HTTPS a proxy would be of limited use and/or more trouble than it's worth.  A freebie browser add-on acting as a crude sniffer is the only tool you'd need.

Any "solution" is going to have to involve the same rules for everybody, humans and bots alike.

[core]

Humans don't log  into their account and make transactions every few minutes for hours.

Says who?  You?  I know several people on this forum who seem to spend all morning finding trades.  And who is to decide how much activity is too much?  Anything faster than a human could _possibly_ do, I think it's safe to say it's a bot, but EVERYTHING ELSE is a pure witch hunt.  If you want to put a threshold on hits per hour, fine put the limit in and publish it for everyone to see.  But that's possibly going to snag humans as well and the bots will be running at that exact limit I guarantee.  The second you start trying to accuse people of running bots, and banning them just based on heuristics it's going to turn into an unpleasant mess.

And just as an aside, if you guys are running login code all the time you could use some optimizations.

[core]

I understand what you are saying perfectly. I'm not personally certain this is correct (i.e. I haven't implemented the method).

I'm not personally certain it's correct, either.  I guess I should have said that in the first place.  I'm ~66.67% certain though.  I am unable to test much because I'm already on thin ice with them.  Even if I'm not correct, let's do some quick math on the two remaining approaches, lock everything vs. examine-lock. 

Keeping the numbers simple, say 10 notes were released and a page hit takes 1 second.  Locking all notes, even one at a time (if I'm wrong), takes 10 seconds.  On the other hand, fetching details before buying will require _double_ the time in the worst case (depending on where your desired notes show up sequentially), and absolute best case it will still be one request behind the lock-everything method.  As long as requests take on LC, this could be up to a couple seconds.  And that's best case, meaning being only 1 hit behind!  Usually it will fall somewhere in the middle.  But blindly locking everything always will win.

It's possibly correct, maybe even probably correct but I would need some time and research to know for sure. I have my doubts but it would explain a lot.

You would also need some blind luck.  If you get it to work then obviously you have one answer.  But if you can't get it to work, that doesn't necessarily prove anything.  It just means you haven't found the proper variable names yet.  On this site, just like any other, there are plenty of "undocumented features".  Fortunately for us there are plenty of examples elsewhere on the site and usually you can guess how they handled things even if the target page doesn't advertise the fact.  Sometimes though a little brute force is the only way and you still may not stumble upon it.

[mo]

Unless it's a very rich person, it's probably institutions using the carting-time-option.

Because there is no shortage of wealthy people with engineering skills in Silicon Valley.  It just seems like institutions have access to whole loans and wouldn't bother themselves with the whole screen scraping thing which is a questionable way to use the site to begin with.

[Rob L]

But blindly locking everything always will win.
You would also need some blind luck.

1) I don't see it quite that way. I would agree it would be no worse but I think probably not substantially faster. Too complicated to know without doing it and I don't want any thin ice myself.
2) Always better to be lucky than good. 

I have been reluctant to speculate on "fixes" LC might employ regarding the lack of loan availability for retail investors. Clearly it would be trivial to limit the maximum investment amount permitted via the web site interface to a reasonably small number. On first thought that would certainly complicate the live(s) of those using/abusing the method postulated in this thread. No doubt this has already been suggested.

[Dennis]

I have been reluctant to speculate on "fixes" LC might employ regarding the lack of loan availability for retail investors. Clearly it would be trivial to limit the maximum investment amount permitted via the web site interface to a reasonably small number. On first thought that would certainly complicate the live(s) of those using/abusing the method postulated in this thread. No doubt this has already been suggested.

The whole loan program was the fix for awhile and I'm sure you remember all the turmoil from retail investors prior to that fix.  Lending Club was very responsive to the problem at the time, it seems that they may be becoming a little less responsive these days - maybe they're too busy spending their IPO money already.  Or possibly there hasn't been enough complaining yet from retail investors.  But it seems like we're right back again (deja vu) with institutions dominating loans.  I don't know that fixing the maximum investment by any one lender would totally solve the problem.  And I wonder if some of these large players might already have multiple accounts that allow them to bypass any limit on individual notes anyway.  It'll be interesting to see if LC has anything to say about this in their August recap (I doubt it).  At some point though I would think that they will have to address the concerns of retail lenders if they want to still be known as a P2P business, no matter how loosely defined that may be.  It would be bad to alienate or anger their once core customer base (us), while trying to make a case for a strong IPO.     

[core]

1) I don't see it quite that way. I would agree it would be no worse but I think probably not substantially faster.

But you do see that by necessity the examine-before-lock approach always requires one more HTTP request at minimum, right?  And that's only if your chosen note shows up first in your sorted list... fat chance.  "Substantially" is of course a relative term so I cannot argue with that.   

But what started all this is my saying that all notes can be bitten off with one chew, which I still believe.  I will be happy to prove this, but I will need a different test account.  Possibly from someone else on the forum who doesn't mind having their account locked and having to speak with Stephanie.  Please, all of you do not fill my PM inbox all at once jumping at this chance. 

Too complicated to know without doing it and I don't want any thin ice myself.

Any cook will tell you that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
(Yeah I know, look what happened to the cook!)

Or possibly there hasn't been enough complaining yet from retail investors.

This is quite probably the reason.  I haven't seen a complaint from a retail investor around here for what, 23 minutes?     The problem is all those complaints get posted in places where it will do little/no good.  Rob L was just talking about how Frenchy was on Bloomberg for a 15 minute interview.  What Rob should have done was taken note of the interviewer's name and posted it here.  Then we could all send emails and voice mails to this reporter saying how s/he just got made a fool of by Laplanche.  I think there would be at least a mediocre chance of a followup.