Autobodge changing again...

Does anybody know what the average Autobid is?  If it's say £40, they'll need 5,000 lenders to take £200K, or 8,000 to take £320K.  Has anybody ever seen that many lenders?

And the least-filled preference means it'll struggle to fill the last few %, especially in Thursday and Friday loans.

I don't know what the average Autobid is, although I guess one could probably have a reasonable stab by looking at the detailed bids on a loan and making an intelligent guess as to whether each bid is autobid (e.g. if more than one bid by same person, probably not, otherwise if placed at 3 a.m., probably yes).  I've not done this, but I have done some rudimentary analysis of the recent Crosby £199k property loan.  There were a total of 1,472 bidders, of whom 1,265 placed only a single bid.  There were 526 single bids of £20 and 198 single bids of £40.  A large proportion of these would have been autobid, but I don't know how many.  I think a lot of Autobids are much bigger, as there are always just too many bids for odd amounts like £560, £620, etc. - unless that's all the cash one had going into one loan, it seems improbable that these are manual bidders (and a lot of these bids come in when most of the UK sleeps).  My guess, therefore, is that the average Autobid is somewhat higher than £40.  On Crosby, the average single bid was £102 - if I take out the £1,000 and £2,000 "round sum" bids (assumed manual), the average comes down to £93.

Hmm. That gets me wondering...

Let's say somebody has £15k invested, £0 available, and Autobodge set to 1%. Suddenly, they get £150 cash available - paid in, or repaid or whatever source. There are seven loans on the PM.

Does Autobodge put £20 into each of them, £140 into one of them and ignore the others, or somewhere in the middle - say £60 on the lowest-filled, £40 on the second lowest, and a couple of £20 on the next two?

Or is there, as we've long suspected, a dartboard and a blindfolded drunken chimp...?

I think it'll only buy £140 parts in the PM.

But then I've got a problem. The overnight dribs and drabs on a £15K investment won't usually amount to £140 in any one night, so they'll have to be accumulated to make up a bid. But this won't happen if Autobid blows the money on the SM every night. So when does it buy on the SM?

PS I now see that question was answered before I finished typing it

I don't believe that to be true. In some records I have analysed, Autobid always invested the same amount which was exactly 1% of portfolio value rounded down to the nearest £20, and there were intervals of 2-9 days between those bids depending on how long it took to build the balance back up to the required total to make a bid. And once the portfolio value rose above a certain amount, Autobid started bidding £20 more, as a single bid.

I guess it was a "design" decision at the point it was first created - if Autobid was allowed to bid below the limit set by investors then many more accounts would be in the running for every new loan, and would be competing for smaller SM parts, which would make a struggling IT solution struggle even more.  

Interestingly, amongst the PM bids there was a single SM purchase for approximately one third of the normal Autobid amount.  This occurred at exactly 2 weeks after the last PM purchase, and the account balance had not reached the amount required to make a PM purchase.  So, it's possible (and I'm basing this on a single data point) that Autobid is coded only to go to the SM when it's been unable to make a PM purchase for an extended period.

PS.  I completely agree that the current implementation of Autobid flies in the face of the diversification mantra, and disadvantages passive investors.  I would advise any of them, especially those with larger portfolios, to set their Autobid amount as low as possible, but even 0.25% is not low enough, and leaves investors with unattractive "large" parts if they ever wish to liquidate (any of) their holdings.

Don't forget that not all users are actually physically in the UK, even if they are UK customers.  Many will be accessing their accounts from overseas, whether on work, holiday or permanent residence.  Similarly, there are a variety of bots in use by some bidders, which would enable them to bid at times when account balances rise above £20.  The behaviours you describe are likely to be manual investors, or possibly bots, rather than Autobid, in my opinion.