Lower interest and higher risk?
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Just another investment tool, aiding diversification.
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Definitely a Quiet start to August @ LC for loans with over 25% of the month already gone!.....
Same across at SM....
Was able to drop a relatively large sum into Finance Direct with NO waiting :)
Better activity today @ LC with 3 x sizeable loans released....
Very hard to get invested as there is no "autolend facility". If you're not sitting at your computer waiting for email notifications you miss out. Even when you get in straight away, some loans have already been filled. Not worth having money sitting in your holding account as it's so hard to invest.
Agree with all the above, have been using Squirrel. So easy.
My recent strategy has been to invest larger and quickly across @ Squirrel Money.
Then as the Loans get repaid @ SM move those repaid funds across to LC day by day \ week by week and slowly Drip Feed them into LC.
As least you $$'s are getting 9% on your funds at SM, while you wait to get into LC at say 14.79%.
Many good loans coming through today @ LC :)
It's been a good few days actually. Encouraging and I'm glad for the business LC is doing. Pre-Xmas ramp up?
*soap box* Personally haven't struggled or had to worry about loans AT ALL. Having that habit of checking emails on the phone every few minutes at work, gone. That monkey on my back, he's gone too. I've hit all the loan grades I wanted in the last four weeks, 38 loans in total. In fact, getting every loan I want I've actually halved my investment per loan, reducing overall risk. Am now making headway on ratio of new loans vs closed while increasing capital.
With some help from others on the forum I've been testing a wee application I knocked out, for personal use a month ago. Recent updates have made it more user friendly. It's an auto investor. I think there is at least a few out there, but why not share the wealth, so to speak.
http://provance.nz/
READ the documentation, FAQ and Disclaimer, please.
It currently only supports filtering by loan grade. And allows different investment amounts per grade. If you have more specific lending criteria this isn't for you, yet...
Some users have commented their antivirus (usually Windows Defender) reports a Trojan present. It's a common issue with the software used to create the installer, false positives to be sure. But if you're AT ALL unsure, don't touch it.
During the install I do get a warning from Windows, "Windows Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk." but that's just because the application isn't signed with a certificate. It's free and I'm not paying for a cert.
Development on this application has halted barring bug fixes. I'm working on something 'more evolved... and more accessible'.
Note: This program behaves in the same way as you having a browser tab open and occasionally peering into the Loans page. It shouldn't upset the powers that be, but if you're concerned it will, don't touch it! It's pretty stable and recovers from most unexpected scenarios, though I am aware of some outstanding bugs. If you're at all unsure, DON'T TOUCH IT!
I'm making it available because I feel it's a feature Lending Crowd should be providing by default and by not doing so they're hurting their retail investor engagement.
PS don't use this thread for questions about the app, PM if you want to know more (It's Windows only ATM...).
There has been lots of loans this week. Plenty to choose from , especially if you are lucky enough to be using pennypickers app
I appreciate the work and skill put into the development of this app...However,
I do not understand why Lendingcrowd allow a third party app access to its website so that Lenders can secure part of the principal of loans.
Why should those lenders who do not wish to use an unofficial third party app be forced to be put at a disadvantage?
Lending Crowd should either establish their own auto-invest, officially list this app on their site, or deny access to it, in my opinion.
Yes it isn't something I would personally use given you have to share your password and email with the plugin. I'm sure the creator does not have any sinister intentions however providing someone with your login details to anything is a bit like giving a thief the keys to your home.
Any idea whats up with LC login. Looks like sites been down all day .7
Isn't this also the second time they have closed site this year?
LC website was back online by 22:30 Wednesday evening....
To those of you using the LC Auto Investor client application, there is a new release.
http://provance.nz
I note there are a number of users still on 17.10.4. I recommend upgrading to 17.10.7 (the current release) as it incorporates a number of imported fixes and useful features.
You'll find full details of the changes here; http://provance.nz/changelog.html.
Thanks PP. It sure Automates the Loan buying process. Not sure it's for everyone as some Users may not be so comfortable with it - But hey it's the way forwards and the future. ( It's no different from a share trading program with pre made orders on standby! )
$2250 B2 loan. Got the email, logged in within 5 seconds. Invested $100 (successfully), refreshed the page and it was gone, probably within 20 seconds. I didn't use auto-invest because it doesn't work on my computer (17.10.7 and using a brand new laptop, Windows 10 so not sure why). You've got to be quick to beat the bots, but it's possible.
It's installed and will open but it won't let me enter a username or password, giving me the exclamation mark like there's nothing in the field. I don't think I'm running anything odd - the computer is only 2 weeks old and just has mostly standard software on it (M$, browsers, Adobe CS). I'll get round to sending a support request soon.
The software update fixed it. I just got in on the $5k B2 without the software running though; quick fingers logging in when the email arrived. It had gone within 30 seconds.
I've enabled the software to see if it gets any of the loans. According to the activity log it's only checking every 1-2 minutes and the majority of B2 loans are gone in 30 seconds. I've got perhaps a 25% chance of getting a loan when I'm not sitting in front of the computer, which is better than the odds without the software.
Email notification at 12:12am for a B2. Most people's software would have been sleeping as I got in easily.
For those that normally miss out when loans come online.
There is currently available a massive $76K B1 loan. Due to size it might take a bit longer to reach 100% so possible a good option if loan matches your criteria.
Hi PP,
Thanks for sharing the app, it works great.
Is there anyway to turn off the sleep-period, or change it? I'm in Europe, so it goes into sleep mode at the same time loans start appearing. Currently getting round it by switching my PC timezone to NZT before going to bed.
Thank you.
You're not alone, and the next release has a couple of features to help you.
⦁ Added: All date/time processing now occurs against New Zealand Standard Time. This allows international users or computers with regional settings not set to NZ to still participate during operational hours in NZ time.
⦁ Added: Increased operational hours from 7am-9:30pm to 6am-1am.
I am testing a local build with these changes and when I'm satisfied I'll push a new release (has a number of other fixes too).
@Demilich > Would be interested to hear if you have now Upgraded to the Version that covers International Time Zones? Is it doing for you what you required?
Saamee .... Did you by any chance take a screenshot of that loan taken out on 7.1.16 that's currently 70 days overdue?
I get the feeling this one could be heading towards creating LendingCrowds first sour loan! Hope not!
@Darchie > Yes I'm in that one too! However did not start keeping screen shotz till June 2016.
I too agree with you, it's been Up to date On & Off for months now - In fact today I read up on LC's T&C's and @ 90 days is when it goes into "In Collection" - so we have 3 weeks to wait and see!!
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Hi, this polling delay is deliberate, for two reasons; to level the playing field a little, and so the LC servers are not overly spammed by users of the application polling every few seconds for new loans.
Yes, it means there's an opportunity to miss 'quick to fill' loans. But you also have the opportunity to pick them up in only a few seconds. There's a new version coming this weekend, I'll see about improving this polling window.
Sorry, meant to post a message about it a few days ago, but have been a bit busy.
The International Time Zone change appears to be working perfectly. Thanks for the update PP!
In regards to the polling for loans, I don't have an issue with it missing some loans either. If every loan is being obviously sucked up instantly by apps, they are more likely to crack down on them. Along similar lines, I was wondering: does it poll at a set interval, or at a random time between two numbers? e.g. it picks a random time between 2 minutes and 4 minutes and retries at that point, rather than just 2 minutes every time. Just to make it less obvious that it's an app.
HI Demilich, glad to hear it's working for our friends abroad.
Re the timing, it's a random value between a min and max period (max period was reduced in the last patch). This isn't so much to mask it's behaviour from the LC servers, (they know the app is out there and in use) it's again just a behaviour that helps introduce some fairness between users of the app and non users.
I don't record connection activity unless the user opts in for anonymous usage reports, but what information I do have suggests not many people are using the app (it's word of mouth beyond this forum). So I don't think it's correct to characterise it as sucking up every loan. Prior to the apps debut small loans and B2 grades were going just as fast as they are now. There's no change there.
Given the rate at which that some loans consistently become filled, I'd bet there's more than a few similar apps out there. Any developer like myself could knock something out and keep it to themselves...
guys the latest update for LC autoinvestor app by PennyPicker is working great. It fixed some long term bugs and is very stable. version 17.11.05
Its been a busy week at LC with many loans uploaded and if you have been using latest build you probably have not missed any/many of those new loan listings.
It's been a great week eh. I've run out of capital twice!
(Re LC Auto Investor, just working on a new version now. I note some users are still on the October release. Really suggest upgrading to get all the improvements found in later versions. Thanks to help from a few folks on the forum, we've tracked down an annoying disconnect bug earlier this week. Really appreciate your help guys.)
Looks like at Midnight tonight this loan will become the 1st LC loan to go 'In Collection Principal'
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@Joker > There is nothing more to add than what is shown on the LC Website....
https://lendingcrowd.co.nz/howitwork...faq#lc-wrapper
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Presumably the borrower has defaulted on the loan, therefore why was there no loss of capital ??
Around today, it is 2 years since LC started up and I started actively investing with them.
So a short wrap up of those 1st 2 Years follows.
N.A.R = 12.72%
Total Loans Invested in = 626
Total Open Loans = 391
Total Closed Loans = 235
That is 37.5% closed after 2 years.
Capital Losses to date = NONE
Write Offs to date = ONE ( NO Losses - 100% Capital & Interest Returned - From SECURITY :) )
LC just works, It's easy to manage.
Direct communication with LC is very responsive and awesome.
Long may this symbiotic relationship last!!
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Hi Saamee, I also have been in for close to 2 years, but my closed/paid off loan percentage is 42% and my return is 11.9% which compares to 12.8% at Harmoney. I am now using PP's auto invest and now getting my share of the higher interest loans and that should improve my stats over time. Not that I am complaining as these returns are still more than I expected when I started 38 months ago at Harmoney.
Hi Saamee, Soolaiman, to add to the data pool, I'm coming up on my two year anniversary too (Jan 2016 was my first LC investment). Running a closed/paid of 33.7%
Total Loans Invested in = 533
Total Open Loans = 352
Total Closed Loans = 180
Total Closed Written Off = 1
Between the three of us that's an average C/P of 37.7%... so Saamee is right on the mark.
My NAR is creeping up, today at 12.38% vs Harmoney, just ticked up into 14.02% this month.
Thanks Saamee. Yes, meaning you can now search your emails for full loan details of any you've brought into using the auto investor application.
Hey guys, some of you might have noticed a loan on LC yesterday/today with a funny balance value. Instead of the Funding Remaining amount being nicely divisible by 50 it was, well not. It got to the point this morning where it was 99% complete with $37.53 outstanding. This rightly raised questions among some investors.
To be clear, the problem wasn't with the LC platform or service, but it arose as a result of my auto invest application. It incorrectly issued a BUY order for an amount not evenly divisible by 50.
The app has been patched to prevent this in version 18.01.04 that was released earlier this morning http://provance.nz/changelog.html.
LC have fixed the error I introduced into their system and it's fine now.
Hope that removes any confusion.
Hi all, nearly a month and no comments here re LC. All good I guess??? I do notice a few more behind in payments lately, one loan there is at 89 days over due. Lets see how that goes.
Hey Saamee any chance of posting a screenshot of the loan application details of this new in collection loan. It's way before i started taking screenshots of details.
Hey @darchie > Although I too am \ was in this loan I have NO screen shot either :(
It was just later that month ( Sep 2016 ) that I started combining "Loan Note" ( LN ) numbers with "Loan Contract" ( LC ) numbers so I could Cross Reference!
Once loans have been cross referenced, then you can locate the screen shot via the combo of LC & LN number :)
Anybody else NOT able to sign into the LC Dashboard since yesterday late evening??
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Yeah ... down by the looks
Just checking detail on this latest B1 loan. Notice that monthly income between $2,000 - $4,000 .. yet monthly outgoings at $5,000
Not really what you'd desire to invest in.
A $2000 band for income is somewhat meaningless anyway for a number of loans. I wish they would post a more specific figure.
I would then like the programme option to limit the % of income that is required for repayments.
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Does Monthly Outgoings exclude the Monthly payment?
I have always assumed that it was before the monthly payment. Ie produced when they are doing their application before they know the repayment terms exactly.
Finally, Lending Crowd moves to block auto investors. Even using an auto investor it's virtually impossible to get into a B2 loan and most B1 loans go within 60 seconds. This means people are using auto investors that are probably hitting the site every few seconds which would cause unnecessary server load for LC.
Agree, the whole thing annoyed me enough to stop investing...
Good decision by Lending Crowd, though somewhat overdue.
It would have been nice if LC had made there own auto investor tool tho.
Harmoney has this option and because it is in-house they have the ability to limit % of loans thru that method.
The fact LC didn't have a in-house tool means they lost control of 3rd party apps.
It was obvious 3rd party apps would be blocked in future but LC should have created and introduced something official by now and then 3rd party app use would have died off on there own. After all the 3rd party apps have existed for ages.
LC dropped the ball and should have seen the demand and been proactive.
Not at all fair on LC's part. The inequality of those who do/don't use the app is being replaced by the inequality of those who can/can't access their computer instantly a loan is listed. The app was available to anyone who wanted to use it but instant access to a computer when a loan lists is not available to all. The app is a much fairer way to distribute loans because it polls at intermittant intervals. Accordingly, there are times that loans have been filled before you get to the next polling time. The best idea for LC would be to encourage all investors to use the app and perhaps restrict the maximum investment via the app to a couple of hundred dollars.
As a person that owns a custom-coded complex website (written in Angular, the same language that LC has used) with 1.3m visitors a year and 5m page views a month, I can't see the reason that LC would wait so long to create an auto-invest function on their website given the obvious demand for it. Either their programmers are stiffing them or they are planning something mega that even we can't conceive of. (It's probably the first option).
It is, at most, a couple of hundred hours of wireframing, coding and testing, if that. In fact, the model is already amply demonstrated by Harmoney, so part of the work is done.
It shouldn't be a separate app, it should simply be a set of rules within the website. We can start with basic functionality and build it up over time.
As the developer behind Provance-LC, probably the most visible of the auto-investor applications (I doubt just I have done this but maybe I shared mine the most) I'd like to respond to some comments on the thread, but first...
I really do appreciate that the limitations of my application were it being tied to the Windows platform, and it's need to act on your behalf and therefore know your LC credentials. And of course this is more than easily exploited. I don't begrudge those of you that shied away, it's sensible in this day and age and your caution will keep you safe in the future. But to those that put their trust in me and most importantly, my integrity, I thank you. Further to this I happily offered the application for free and even then some of you chose to donate to the continued hosting and development of the app, a huge thank you. You all know who you are :)
And now my comments:
Personally I deliberately designed the application to work in a way that limited polling to no less than a few minutes, primarily to not starve non app users of loans. There's also an implicit assumption in your comment that users of the auto-invest tools are so numerous or invest so much that they take up all available loan notes. From the usage statistics I have this is not the case in the slightest.
Agreed, this change in a sense makes things less fair. But life isn't fair so we cannot stew on that. For a start we're all in a position to be investing what to us is spare money on this venture. I think we need to remember not everyone is in a position to do so and we should remember that at least.
And while I sit at a computer screen all day I cannot react to every email I receive to see if it's a new loan. In fact the burden I felt lifted when I created this app was huge. I could relax now. Though with the recent reduction in loans on the LC platform and today's announcement I feel like I'm left with three options; invest more heavily in each loan when I can catch it; halt introduction of new capital and let what's there tick over; actively withdraw from the platform as it's currently too hard to use. I haven't settled on what I'm going to do yet. I really want to see LC succeed, I think they have a real point of difference against the other lenders and I feel compelled to help where I can. I've liked the company and the people from day one and am not so quick to turn my back on them. But the idea of having to do another year of manually buying into loans, honestly exhausts me.
Then you might agree with me that a feature that some of us understood to be available early this year, mid this year, and now second quarter next year will likely never happen. If they have this on the roadmap for 2019 I'm really curious about what new content will be delivered in the interim. I expect none. And I expect this feature will continue to be pushed out until it all becomes a moot point...
I really did want to provide a Windows, Max, Linux application and went down the route of designing a solution and planning the development time. However I'm doing this in what free time I have available and it's not the only project I have on the go. I had to compromise and not take on the extra work. In the long run I don't see it would have made any difference to today's outcome. Without push notifications from either LC or a cloud provider a mobile app was out of the question too.
In summary I don't see this delay a question of resources, money or people. This feature could be developed and tested, rolled out to some preferential customers for beta testing, could be done by one person in a few months, at most. They can even take learnings from Harmoney and overseas platforms. Everything they need to develop has already been solved by someone else.
Personally, the way I see it is that LC don't have the loan volume to warrant development of an auto invest feature and they don't have enough dev staff on hand to allocate some to this feature development. I've offered to help them in any way I can to bring release of this feature forward.
Aaron.
Hi Aaron and thanks for the app. Like you I wasn't in a position to react to very email to invest in LC's loans and found real relief in being able to invest automatically. Very disappointed that LC has gone this way without offering an alternative. Again - thanks for your enterprise - it's most appreciated.
Seems to me LC could reduce interest rates if demand from lenders is so high. I would have placed more money with LC but simply couldn't get significant volume.
Aaron - I also thank you - your generosity in sharing this nifty program has saved my sanity - but sadly all your work has been sidelined! You must feel frustrated with LC 4sure.
i was off-line yesterday so totally missed all the mentioned changes above. Has LC made any public statement? if so where's it to be found?
An issue I have with LC is; I can only view my statements for around the first half of a month, after that trying to access just boots me out of their site! This has been on-going & unfixed for approximately 6-8 odd months ... I'm told they're working on a fix ... SO I ASK - who else has this Issue?
Since located their Notice!
@PennyPicker - I used your software and it was great, so thanks for creating it. I was talking about people who built their own version of your software who might not have controlled the flood of requests like yours did.
If I was building my own, I would have it checking every 10 seconds or so and when one comes up make a number of quick investments of $100 until it was exhausted. This is how I reckon these $2500 B2s go before you can even have time to log in.
PennyPicker/ Aaron was a legend for providing this app and it was much appreciated. We got in and have beta tested a feature which Lc could implement in future.
The road forward from here will be an interesting one. Lc loan volume is small compared to other p2p operators.
Today could be considered a fork in the road. What happens from here and how Lc handles high demand vs low volume vs limited capital to upgrade technology will be fascinating.
The loss of this access is only perceived as unfair to those who used the app (a self centred view) - to all others it makes the current system fairer.
I love the way some of you think. I've had a number of emails asking about subverting this 'restriction' and you're all very clever. The solution would surely work and could be obfuscated enough to hide the automated activity from LC. Though for the record I'm not going down that path.
Yes and no. As you know software always has an expiry date, and these sort of 'gap filler' apps are shorter than most. For me the enjoyment was in solving the problem of missing out on loans, and then sharing that success with others.
Just got a loan notification by email but still no joy!