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Post by GSV3MIaC on May 11, 2016 17:48:34 GMT
Just a comment / thought, caused by the recent repayment, the promise (threat?) of more, and the subsequent (we hope) flow of new loans to invest in, but personally I find keeping my holding fed and watered is rather a chore, compared to AC, RS, or even FC, for instance. There's no easy way of putting repaid funds (or interest) back into loans (even if I left the choice to the platform) and while prefunding will eventually (one hopes) soak up any excess cash, there's no way of making sure it invests only as much as I have sat there (and ups it's game if there has been a large repayment). Yes, I suppose I could leave SS to sell any I "bought but didn't pay for", but that is possibly not going to be well received by SS (or by other punters who miss out) - not my idea of a neat solution anyway.
Some of the other platforms with auto-invest facilities do make a hash of it, one way or another, but at least there is the option to just let the platform get on with it (maybe setting some guidelines, like 'No A+ loans, please', or 'I want to put this in the 3 year market at rate no lower than 5%') - with SS you are continually having to manually chase the bus.
So is it just me, or are there other people who would like some degree of 'fire and forget'?
(of course INPL is part of the cause - with other platforms your 'prefunding / bid' instruction would not be actioned if you didn't have the funds in your account. Maybe SS just need an 'if I ain't got it, don't bid it' option?)
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cooling_dude
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Post by cooling_dude on May 11, 2016 17:58:32 GMT
Sounds like this thread need's a poll 
I can see the appeal, but it's not for me. Personally, I do like to look after my money, and I also feel the need to work a tad to earn the generous 12%. There's also a case of keeping the masses at bay. By implementing a feature to make it easier to re-invest, you're going to see an increase in interest from others who previously found SS too hard to invest in. More investors see's less allocation on the PM and any possible auto reinvest.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on May 11, 2016 18:02:45 GMT
Seems straightforward to me.
Want a platform that you can just ignore and leave alone? SS is not the one for you. Hey-ho. There's plenty of others out there which fit your needs.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on May 11, 2016 18:11:49 GMT
I guess that attitude may, or may not, reflect how savingstream feel about expanding their target audience. 8>. I don't see that a tick box saying 'don't INPL me for more than I have available' (for instance) is going to disadvantage any of the 'hands on' types (even hands on types may go on vacation sometimes?) |
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nick
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Post by nick on May 11, 2016 18:17:51 GMT
I personally would be against more commoditisation which be required for a robo/rules based investing approach. If you start using auto-invest facilities you might as well invest in a fund product where someone else makes the investment decision or the decision is a simple rules based approach such as FC's fund. Perhaps this is one solution, a SS 'fund' that invests across all loans and auto-reinvests, but it isn't something I would be interested in. It is a slight pain having to re-invest when each loan repays after 6 months (hopefully), but its not an undue burden and only causes a small cash drag - just my view.......
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on May 11, 2016 18:21:38 GMT
I guess that attitude may, or may not, reflect how savingstream feel about expanding their target audience. 8>. I don't think that's their biggest problem at the moment. True, but a hands-on type can adjust their pre-fund to suit their availability, and sell-down any excess allocation (or other parts to match the overdraft.
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cooling_dude
Bye Bye's for the PPI
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Post by cooling_dude on May 11, 2016 18:22:06 GMT
I guess that attitude may, or may not, reflect how savingstream feel about expanding their target audience. 8>. I don't see that a tick box saying 'don't INPL me for more than I have available' (for instance) is going to disadvantage any of the 'hands on' types (even hands on types may go on vacation sometimes?) I guarantee that they have sat down to discuss making the platform as easy as possible to attract the masses. Features such as a pre-funding on the SM, and your current suggestion may have come up. I imagine that SS are happy with the way things are because they have been able to fund all the loans they currently have... If the situation changes in the future... may we see an increase in convenience features? Maybe... However, I would imagine there is a fine line between attracting the masses and upsetting the BHs.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on May 11, 2016 18:25:15 GMT
The 6 month re-investment is not the only issue though - there's the monthly interest reinvestment (unless you are drawing it out), and the 'trimming' of prefunding if you don't want to either expand, or shrink, your overall portfolio (unless, as I say, you just assume SS will quietly dispose of any overbuying without getting mad at you). The 'fund' approach seems to work for AC, although it doesn't get round the 'too few loans for too many lenders' issue, and all their funds offer lower rates of return than the headline rates on their (best .. aka 'riskiest') manual investment account loans.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on May 11, 2016 19:41:15 GMT
I don't see that a tick box saying 'don't INPL me for more than I have available' (for instance) is going to disadvantage any of the 'hands on' types (even hands on types may go on vacation sometimes?) True, but a hands-on type can adjust their pre-fund to suit their availability, and sell-down any excess allocation (or other parts to match the overdraft. Only if they keep a close eye on their account. I don't mind doing that when I'm at home, but when I'm on holiday I'd like to be able to ignore SS for a while. I'd rather not get into a situation where I have a lot if idle funds and not enough pre-funding requests. (That's the situation I'm in as I write this.) Or the situation where my pre-funding requests have been successful and I have a negative balance for long enough that SS have to take action to clear it. And I don't want to reduce all my pre-funding targets before going on holiday and then return home to find a large idle balance because I've had loans pay off while I've been away and there have been a number of attractive loans released after that that I didn't invest enough in. A tick box saying 'don't INPL me for more than I have available' might be an easy step for SS to take, and I'd appreciate having that option at times. A slightly less attractive option for me would be being able to tell SS that I'm going to be on holiday and that they shouldn't hesitate to clear any negative balance by selling the last parts purchased via pre-funding -- and them being happy to do that without giving my account a black mark. (I expect they'd prefer the first option.)
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Post by GSV3MIaC on May 12, 2016 9:25:39 GMT
That was more or less what I was thinking of .. e.g. I'm never quite sure whether a 'rollover' is going to happen, or whether the loan will be repaid and then a new one launched .. if I'm not sat at my PC for whatever reason, and I guess wrong, I'm either left with a pile of cash (no rollover, and no prefunding set) or else twice what I wanted and a negative balance to sort out (or have sorted for me) (rolled over and prefunded into the new loan).
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mike
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Post by mike on May 12, 2016 10:17:54 GMT
Any changes that make investing easier to manage, which in turn increases supply of funds is a bad idea unless there is an equivalent increase of available loans. Most of the time it's hard enough to invest/reinvest funds in SS. Does it really make sense to make it even harder?
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Post by meledor on May 12, 2016 11:58:49 GMT
I would be wary of introducing more automation along the lines suggested. Other sites may have such features but their headline rates are lower. We should all expect losses but judging by the discussion on the "Net return after losses" thread there is a wide variation in estimates of the net rate after expected losses. This suggests to me that there are considerable differences in how the risk of SS loans is perceived and stresses the importance of due diligence in lending in determining the actual net rate. Increasing automation like auto-investing would discourage that perception and would be a bad thing imo.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on May 12, 2016 19:08:06 GMT
Hmm, I guess I maybe mistitled the thread (so I just changed it). I don't really want =more= automation; we already have a 'set the cruise control for £100k into everything and damn the torpedoes' (called generic prefunding), but that just keeps on regardless of whether you have the cash (it assumes INPL). I guess I'd have to say that the automation level is very high (about as high as you could get on the PM), but intelligence and flexibility is rather poor. Would be nice to 'program' a profile (based on LTV%, number of loans to the lender, or whatever), but a simple 'don't bid if I haven't got the cash at the time (or don't bid more than the cash I have) would be a cheap start. At least it would be a backstop ('turn off cruise control if you hit something' or maybe 'if the gas runs out'). Not like it would affect anyone who chose not to use it.
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Steerpike
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Post by Steerpike on May 12, 2016 19:23:14 GMT
Would I be happy if I could configure platforms to make the decisions for me that I would have made had I been logged in at all the appropriate times?
Hell yeah!
I do use the somewhat dumb auto invest tools on 4 platforms, but not FC obviously, currently one needs a suitably adept BOT for that one.
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jonah
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Post by jonah on May 12, 2016 20:45:36 GMT
Would I be happy if I could configure platforms to make the decisions for me that I would have made had I been logged in at all the appropriate times? Hell yeah! I do use the somewhat dumb auto invest tools on 4 platforms, but not FC obviously, currently one needs a suitably adept BOT for that one. I'm guessing RS and AC... But what are the other 2 if you don't mind me asking?
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