How to keep a "Want" list for the SM (cont)

I must have overlooked them in the spat that my thread descended into. SL75 if you are listening please repeat.

The point / question was how do people keep track of what loans they want to buy into on the SM (and how much), given you only have seconds (usually) to decide whether to play captcha or not. Some folks use post-its, some folks have PC programs to assist, SL75 had a neat 'add on javascript bookmarked page' trick, etc. I suggested SS might like to keep the prefund 'how much do you want' box around for the life of the loan (what I'd really like is for them to autobuy until I get there!) .. as mentioned on another thread about the release of later tranches of existing loans, a continuing 'I want £x in this one' database field at SS's end would permit fair-sharing of those extra tranches, rather than dumping the whole mess onto the SM for FFF.

They say a picture speaks 1000 words...
Since the previous post, I decided it was worth re-organising my portfolio a little (I'm a little over-exposed to borrowers with multiple loans, so now want to increase exposure on single loans), so this is what (a part of one of) my screen(s) looks like during a buying session.



The "back" window has check4change auto-refreshing it every 30 seconds when the market is idle, or every 10 seconds when it's active (can be done manually if you prefer), and the "front" window has the buying page for any loan you want. When I spot a loan appear on the list, I'll glance up at the toolbar, and see if it's on the list, and if so, click on the relevant link in the front window.

The links in firefox's "bookmarks toolbar" are javascript "bookmarklets", so rather than going to a new page, they modify the current page, and in particular they change the form on the RHS, both filling in the amount to buy, and also changing the target of the form, so it buys parts of a different loan. You still need to click "Invest" and "OK", and verify the captcha as normal... but you can have a quicker reaction time, as the captcha can be completed IN ADVANCE (but as it expires after about 1-2 minutes, you need to click a lot of trees, boats, lakes, rivers, street signs/names/numbers, etc. during a buying session...). This is only likely to be productive during "busy periods" when a lot of loan parts are changing hands.

The version of the bookmark I posted before was
javascript:(function(){document.invest.action="/invest/182";document.invest.amount.value="100"})()

(this would be for buying £100 of PBL084, which has a 182 in its URL)

All the bookmarks differ from each other only in those 2 numbers.

Often you'll see someone selling down a batch of several different loans in sequence, each being taken up within a few seconds. In such cases it can be possible to figure out which one of your targets will be next, in which case, you can initialise the form by clicking the relevant link, press the "Invest" button, and be hovering over "ok" for when the loan next appears.

In a sense, this is equivalent to the technique that has been discussed before where, when you see the amount available drop to zero, you can leave the browser window hanging around for the NEXT time it shows a non-zero amount... except that you can easily switch the same form to buy ANY loan.

If I succeed in buying the full amount of the target, I'll just delete the relevant bookmark. Otherwise, during the next quiet period, I'll edit the link to reduce the target amount. Pence can easily be included with a decimal point, as they don't take any longer to "type" by this method.

sl75:  What is the function of the two bookmarks at the left of the toolbar?  ('Buy 50' and 'Buy 150')

cooling_dude:
 

• Do you have to have a tab showing the page for the loan open in your browser for this to work?

• Do you know whether these frequent checks put a load on your PC or your
  mobile device (if that's what you're using)?  If it requires data
  transfer this might be a problem for anyone with a limited data allowance from their ISP (or phone company). 

• What about the load on the SS server?  Might it be an issue?  Or is it so small that no one will care?

1. No, I don't need a tab opened for every loan; but I do keep just the one tab open (logged into the SS website, on the available loan page) so that I don't get logged out.  You can be doing something completely different on the PC; you will still get the notification box on your screen.  Click it and it opens the loan page on chrome.

2. I'm using my laptop, it's not a particularly powerful one and doesn't seem to slow it down at all.

3. As it is only monitoring one part of the page, I don't think it will be an issue.  However, this is more GSV3MIaC field.......... poke> poke> GSV3MIaC