ablender
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Post by ablender on Feb 26, 2016 6:51:43 GMT
I logged on to SS a few minutes ago and saw a couple of loans open to investment. I decided to invest £500 in one of them and immediately clicked "invest" but then received notification that my investment had been reduced to £26.83. I see no point in investing anything less than say £50 or preferably £100 otherwise you end up with a multitude of different loans which mature at different times, if you want to invest substantial funds in SS in order to benefit from their market leading 12% interest. For the average small investor; keeping track of a large number of loans is too much hassle and too time consuming - although I am retired I have better things to do with my time rather than devote hours to looking after my meagre savings!
Ideally, as a previous "poster" suggested, it would be nice if SS allowed you, on the "invest now" page, to state the minimum loan part you wish to receive. This would avoid you having to ignore the request to remit your funds, which I feel is unethical, or having the hassle of having to immediately sell your loan part. It is very easy and quick to resell the £26.83 you received. It only means that someone else arrived before you and took the difference. I have to disagree with your suggestion of having a minimum investment if it means I have to type in another number while buying. It is already a race against time as it is without adding other obstacles.
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sl75
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Post by sl75 on Feb 26, 2016 7:50:23 GMT
I logged on to SS a few minutes ago and saw a couple of loans open to investment. I decided to invest £500 in one of them and immediately clicked "invest" but then received notification that my investment had been reduced to £26.83. I see no point in investing anything less than say £50 or preferably £100 otherwise you end up with a multitude of different loans which mature at different times, if you want to invest substantial funds in SS in order to benefit from their market leading 12% interest. For the average small investor; keeping track of a large number of loans is too much hassle and too time consuming - although I am retired I have better things to do with my time rather than devote hours to looking after my meagre savings!
Ideally, as a previous "poster" suggested, it would be nice if SS allowed you, on the "invest now" page, to state the minimum loan part you wish to receive. This would avoid you having to ignore the request to remit your funds, which I feel is unethical, or having the hassle of having to immediately sell your loan part. It is very easy and quick to resell the £26.83 you received. It only means that someone else arrived before you and took the difference. I have to disagree with your suggestion of having a minimum investment if it means I have to type in another number while buying. It is already a race against time as it is without adding other obstacles. A single check-box (and the back-end logic to support it) would be sufficient. The checkbox could be labelled something like: [ ] Fill or kill (?) With the (?) showing an explanatory comment along the lines of "if checked, your buying instruction will be cancelled unless it can be met in full". Then the people who don't like shrapnel can check it, and those who just want to fill up with whatever size loan parts they can get can leave it unchecked. The complexity of implementing "the back-end logic to support it" may potentially be more complex than it seems on the surface, but will certainly be no more complex than a user-entered minimum.
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webwiz
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Post by webwiz on Feb 26, 2016 8:45:52 GMT
webwiz : Where to they go? When someone adds a larger amount to the SM for the same loan, they get merged. Unlike your loan parts, all SM parts are merged. Somebody buys the shrapnel when they buy a larger part. Ah that explains it. Damn clever these SS guys. I guess it is a kind of virtual hoover.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Feb 26, 2016 8:50:25 GMT
I logged on to SS a few minutes ago and saw a couple of loans open to investment. I decided to invest £500 in one of them and immediately clicked "invest" but then received notification that my investment had been reduced to £26.83. I see no point in investing anything less than say £50 or preferably £100 otherwise you end up with a multitude of different loans which mature at different times But if you then see £23.17 in that loan on the SM and buy it... bingo. You have £50 in that loan.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Feb 26, 2016 10:32:41 GMT
But forever shown as two separate (untidy) pieces.
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sl75
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Post by sl75 on Feb 26, 2016 11:46:20 GMT
But forever shown as two separate (untidy) pieces. Only if you dig down to look at them... on the main list it shows only the total invested.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Feb 26, 2016 11:52:40 GMT
But you have to dig down to sell them, for instance. And the downloaded report(s) show them both separately.
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sl75
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Post by sl75 on Feb 26, 2016 12:42:41 GMT
But you have to dig down to sell them, for instance. And the downloaded report(s) show them both separately. I'm sure that your spreadsheet and bots will cope.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Feb 26, 2016 12:50:21 GMT
Yes they do, I wasn't talking specifically about me, I was talking in general why someone might not want to own their £100 in PBL081 as £13.13 plus £45.11 plus £7.43 plus ...
I understand some folks want to know when each £7.43 bit was bought, but for those who don't care maybe SS could give us a 'consolidate my shrapnel' button (which is effectively putting them all on the market and then making sure that the buyer who buys them back in one piece is actually you).
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sam i am
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Post by sam i am on Feb 26, 2016 13:16:35 GMT
It is very easy and quick to resell the £26.83 you received. It only means that someone else arrived before you and took the difference. I have to disagree with your suggestion of having a minimum investment if it means I have to type in another number while buying. It is already a race against time as it is without adding other obstacles. A single check-box (and the back-end logic to support it) would be sufficient. The checkbox could be labelled something like: [ ] Fill or kill (?) With the (?) showing an explanatory comment along the lines of "if checked, your buying instruction will be cancelled unless it can be met in full". Then the people who don't like shrapnel can check it, and those who just want to fill up with whatever size loan parts they can get can leave it unchecked. The complexity of implementing "the back-end logic to support it" may potentially be more complex than it seems on the surface, but will certainly be no more complex than a user-entered minimum. It's not just shrapnel that would be left behind. This logic would also stop someone who wanted to buy the entirety of a loan part but someone else took a little nibble first. Would you be happy to have your (say) £1000 investment stopped because someone else took £10 ahead of you? By the time you had gone back into the loan the other £990 would probably have disappeared. This is how Moneything worked until very recently and on occasions it was rather annoying (though admittedly there was no choice as you are proposing). Fortunately they have now changed.
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ablender
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Post by ablender on Feb 26, 2016 13:35:08 GMT
Personally, I find it easier to keep track of what interest I should receive per day when the loan parts are kept separate. When they are merged you do not know what is what.
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sl75
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Post by sl75 on Feb 26, 2016 13:55:31 GMT
It's not just shrapnel that would be left behind. This logic would also stop someone who wanted to buy the entirety of a loan part but someone else took a little nibble first. Would you be happy to have your (say) £1000 investment stopped because someone else took £10 ahead of you? By the time you had gone back into the loan the other £990 would probably have disappeared. That would depend whether it's a loan that has £1000 available reasonably often. If someone else took £10 ahead of me, then in order to make my intended £1000 purchase, I'd then need to go back to the market next time it's available to buy the other £10. If I'm going to end up with my £1000 split between a £10 and a £990 unit (or perhaps more characteristically, a £9.21 and a £990.79 unit), and object to this as "untidy", does it really matter which order the parts were bought in? I've certainly sold off odd bits of shrapnel to tidy up the portfolio, but only AFTER exceeding my intended target holding... I'd normally take "more money invested" over "tidy portfolio", so for me the latter is only a secondary consideration. At present, there are only 4 loans that are below my desired holding. If any piece of those becomes available while I'm watching ("shrapnel" or not) I'll be trying to take them. On the other hand, if I get a further tranche of funds I want to invest (without sufficient loans drawing down to absorb this) and thus wish to increase my holding across-the-board again, I'd (at least initially) be preferring "£50.00 or nothing" on further purchases.
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sam i am
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Post by sam i am on Feb 26, 2016 14:10:44 GMT
It's not just shrapnel that would be left behind. This logic would also stop someone who wanted to buy the entirety of a loan part but someone else took a little nibble first. Would you be happy to have your (say) £1000 investment stopped because someone else took £10 ahead of you? By the time you had gone back into the loan the other £990 would probably have disappeared. That would depend whether it's a loan that has £1000 available reasonably often. If someone else took £10 ahead of me, then in order to make my intended £1000 purchase, I'd then need to go back to the market next time it's available to buy the other £10. If I'm going to end up with my £1000 split between a £10 and a £990 unit (or perhaps more characteristically, a £9.21 and a £990.79 unit), and object to this as "untidy", does it really matter which order the parts were bought in? I've certainly sold off odd bits of shrapnel to tidy up the portfolio, but only AFTER exceeding my intended target holding... I'd normally take "more money invested" over "tidy portfolio", so for me the latter is only a secondary consideration. At present, there are only 4 loans that are below my desired holding. If any piece of those becomes available while I'm watching ("shrapnel" or not) I'll be trying to take them. On the other hand, if I get a further tranche of funds I want to invest (without sufficient loans drawing down to absorb this) and thus wish to increase my holding across-the-board again, I'd (at least initially) be preferring "£50.00 or nothing" on further purchases. I think either you have missed my point or I have missed yours. My point is that when someone has taken £10 ahead of you, you then end up with nothing. You get nothing because your transaction was aborted when 'only' £990 was remaining (assuming you ticked the 'kill' option). Then when you go back to get the remaining £990, it has all gone to someone else who was in the queue after your first buy attempt and before your second (and had probably ticked the 'fill' option). With the race to buy loan parts that we are currently experiencing, you are unlikely to get two bites at the cherry. The way to just avoid the shrapnel would be to have functionality that said fill unless the remaining part is below £x, then kill. But now we are introducing even more complexity.
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ablender
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Post by ablender on Feb 26, 2016 14:27:04 GMT
That would depend whether it's a loan that has £1000 available reasonably often. If someone else took £10 ahead of me, then in order to make my intended £1000 purchase, I'd then need to go back to the market next time it's available to buy the other £10. If I'm going to end up with my £1000 split between a £10 and a £990 unit (or perhaps more characteristically, a £9.21 and a £990.79 unit), and object to this as "untidy", does it really matter which order the parts were bought in? I've certainly sold off odd bits of shrapnel to tidy up the portfolio, but only AFTER exceeding my intended target holding... I'd normally take "more money invested" over "tidy portfolio", so for me the latter is only a secondary consideration. At present, there are only 4 loans that are below my desired holding. If any piece of those becomes available while I'm watching ("shrapnel" or not) I'll be trying to take them. On the other hand, if I get a further tranche of funds I want to invest (without sufficient loans drawing down to absorb this) and thus wish to increase my holding across-the-board again, I'd (at least initially) be preferring "£50.00 or nothing" on further purchases. I think either you have missed my point or I have missed yours. My point is that when someone has taken £10 ahead of you, you then end up with nothing. You get nothing because your transaction was aborted when 'only' £990 was remaining (assuming you ticked the 'kill' option). Then when you go back to get the remaining £990, it has all gone to someone else who was in the queue after your first buy attempt and before your second (and had probably ticked the 'fill' option). With the race to buy loan parts that we are currently experiencing, you are unlikely to get two bites at the cherry. The way to just avoid the shrapnel would be to have functionality that said fill unless the remaining part is below £x, then kill. But now we are introducing even more complexity. And even that would not suite sl75. Let us say there is £1000 on SM and sl75 wants to buy £1000 but not anything below £800. If I arrive before him and buy £176.25, because that is what I happened to have, he will end up with £823.75. According to sl75's argument that would be untidy and he will object to it.
The way I deal with this is a bit like going fishing. I buy. I see what I receive and I sell back what I do not want, the whole part or a section of it. As one likes to say . . . simples.
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sl75
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Post by sl75 on Feb 26, 2016 14:52:18 GMT
I think either you have missed my point or I have missed yours. My point is that when someone has taken £10 ahead of you, you then end up with nothing. Well, if that's not an outcome you want, it'd be simple - don't tick the box! By the way, it's not a "fill" option or a "kill" option, it's a "fill or kill" option (as opposed to the default option which buys whatever is available, even if it doesn't completely fill your buying instruction). Whilst you might not be motivated to load the buying page, complete the captcha, fill in the form, and submit for a small piece of shrapnel, this is already a sunk cost by the time you get to the "the £1000 you were trying to buy has mostly gone, but here's some shrapnel instead" page. For loans that are sufficiently scarce that I'm unlikely to get another bite at the cherry any time soon, I'd personally keep buying in whatever size units are actually possible, until I'm at (or at least close to) my target, and only then start worrying about tidyness.
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