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Post by charliebrown on Dec 31, 2016 11:52:09 GMT
A full year gone by since the repayment date and still nothing. 😬 Not holding out much hope for this one. Defaults will occur; many on FS have run for far longer than this one. As investors, it is a reminder why DD should be carried out with each loan, with the security taking centre stage. One investor is clearly confident it will repay in full - 6k in the last 48hrs invested It's a sobering reminder of what can (and does) go wrong. But.... who in their right mind would sink 6k in a defaulted loan? Have they discovered there's a gold mine beneath the garden center On a serious note, with so much pent up demand for seemingly anything do you think we should be able to trade our loan parts on the SM at a premium? That would certainly spice things up.
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Post by charliebrown on Dec 31, 2016 9:28:16 GMT
5 year money is 3.7% now , its like a limbo dance. I think that they should be ashamed of themselves. I bet lots of their investors have no idea that they are getting so little for tying it up for so long. I have a soft spot for RS as it was my first foray on p2p platforms. The RS website is probably the best in the business (some of the other p2p websites are just awful; try rendering FS on an iPad and you'll get what I mean). However, I've long since withdrawn all of my RS investments and don't intend to go back unless things change. Whilst platforms like MT and FS have comparatively lousy websites they have much better investment propositions, which matters more. The RS provision fund was always a nice comfort factor, but at rates of 3.x% it's not for me. I'm not 100% sure how the rates get set? Is it pure market forces? If it is then so be it. It's a borrowers' market so to speak as there always, on all p2p platforms, appears to be far more lenders than borrowers, and those lenders seem very hungry to invest in ANYTHING. I personally wouldn't invest a single penny at these rates though, But good luck to RS as I still like the platform, it's just not what I'm looking for these days.
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Post by charliebrown on Dec 26, 2016 8:59:17 GMT
I'm increasing but only because I've not hit my target invested yet and still have another 1/3rd of my final target still to be invested in p2p. However I am not yet fully diversified either so I will sell parts of loans as newer better loans come along (target 1% per loan). I have some much bigger holdings then 1% on SS due to some good loans but also because of connected loans/borrowers. Although I'm over diversified in other platforms (FS, BM, MT) which generally are much under 1% per loan. Overall no matter the situation with comms I still only invest in loans I feel confident with holding to term. Therefore I will increase only as and when decent loans are presented. This is a truly sensible, sleep well at night strategy. However, with this type of strategy how much funds can you hope to get invested? 12% of not much is still not much. It's a safe strategy though.
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Post by charliebrown on Dec 25, 2016 21:22:05 GMT
My initial reaction is I'd like to invest more in SS. However, I'm actually already in quite deep and on balance I'm probably not fully appreciating the risks as I haven't (yet) been burnt. heres a few things that I'm unhappy about... 1) It is quite hard to get a decent amount invested and diversified. I've set my funding on some loans quite high and then found on launch I get allocated 400 or 500 pounds only. At the rate I want to invest, this is useless to me. 2) The SM is great as a seller but it's a nightmare as a buyer. I've found it very hard to get decent chunks of money invested via SM. I'm not going to complain too much about this one as you can't have your cake and eat it. However, for me, since 99% of the time I am buying not selling it's frustrating 3) As an investor I feel insignificant to SS. Since all loans are heavily oversubscribed I feel investors are a commodity, when we see investors posting on this forum that they are reducing their SS investment I can almost hear SS saying "so what, there's plenty more where you came from". 4) I've just been looking over what's available on SS. There's a lot of truly toxic looking on there. I'd be surprised if all those loans can be resolved easily. Time will tell. But there looks to be some significant issues brewing. Merry Christmas.
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Post by charliebrown on Dec 5, 2016 18:52:52 GMT
As far as Lendy/SS is concerned, they will not lose out on existing loans. In theory, all the loans are funded by us. For sure they keep some for themselves but they don't need to.
Even if there is 'maximum Armageddon' and all lenders try to sell all their loan parts, all this means is that there would be £147M available for sale on the SM with nobody wanting to buy. This is a mere shifting of lenders loan parts from the 'Live' category to 'Selling' category; nothing else. The same lenders (us) would still be lending to the same borrowers.
SS would find it rather difficult to fund the next loan and their business would collapse as the interest dries up as loans are (hopefully) repaid.
In this situation, the lenders must hope that the loans are either repaid in due course or that the securities will cover the loan values in case of defaults.
If the Armageddon means that many loans default with insufficient security then it is the lenders of those loans who will lose out.
What sort of event are we talking about here, that could trigger such an "Armageddon" ? If we are talking about a total collapse of the banking system, then we wouldn't be any better off with our cash "safely" in the bank - it would still be inaccessible. Unless we're all going to stuff £20 notes under the mattress .... If, instead, we are talking about a stock market crash for our Armageddon, then people would be selling their stocks for whatever they could , and looking for a new home for their cash. If some of that cash were to find its way into P2P that could be construed being good for the P2P marketplace. What other Armageddon are there ? An all out war ?? I guess if that happens, and P2P profitability would be the last thing on our minds. Anything else ? How about Donald Trump becoming the next president of the USA - nah, that's just a ludicrous thought that could never actually happen ...... Yes, that was my Amegedon. An event or series of events that causes all or most values of securities to drop below the value of the loan. You might say a bit like an average Joe finding himself in a negative equity situation. Why do we always say it needs to be a war or something so drastic, I don't think it does by any means.
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Post by charliebrown on Dec 5, 2016 17:19:48 GMT
It is not that I play Russian roulette. It is more a matter of not liking that small dash in front of the the number representing the date. It's probably more like pass-the-parcel, but inside the parcel is a bomb
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Post by charliebrown on Dec 5, 2016 16:39:31 GMT
I don't think I'd buy negative days loans, but I am holding some negative days loans. My logic is this, I do not want to play the "Russian roulette" game of buy with the intent to jump ship right before repayment is due. This strategy might not work forever. I prefer to choose my loans and as long as I'm not aware that anything significant has changed I'll hold them until they (hopefully) repay. Negative days loans are pretty common and so far they usually extend or repay.
Regarding the notion that p2p couldn't survive a significant downturn or credit crunch then I'd also fear that's true, I fear it would be complete Armageddon. Do the people who run p2p sites stand to lose anything personally or will it only be us lenders that lose out.
Something tells me that I shouldn't have put quite so much cash in p2p but the buzz of it is quite addictive. Perhaps the online nature of it is the issue; it kind of feels like a computer game hahahaha but it will suddenly feel very real if I lose a big bundle of cash.
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Post by charliebrown on Nov 15, 2016 9:00:57 GMT
Is anyone worried about these loans? I've got 6 figures across them all but I haven't had a chance to follow my investment closely (my bad). I tried to offload them on SM but, at the time, they didn't sell so after about 7 days I cancelled the SM sale. I saw some updates saying 2 buyers are waiting to buy but that update seems to have disappeared. I think I also saw somewhere on this forum that the borrow has been declared bankrupt. The latest update goes back to a position that had been communicated weeks ago in that there's some investment money about ready to pour in and resolve everything (I, for one, am finding it hard to have any confidence in that update, and why was the previous update, about having 2 buyers, removed). Starting to get a bit nervous, alarm bells are ringing. I noticed the SM for these loans is clogged up again and probably can't shift them. I generally, as a strategy, am OK to hold loans to completion, but just wanted to ask the experts on here what they believe the risk on these loans to be. The sm has emptied out several times recently. There us less than £1900 in total of these loans currently. If you had persevered you could have rid yourself of these loans. Indeed, you still could, if you dripped if on now. Edit: More on there now. I no longer like the look of these. I've just dropped most of what I had back on the SM. Let's see whether it will sell. Thanks for the links and the advice.
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Post by charliebrown on Nov 15, 2016 3:03:04 GMT
Is anyone worried about these loans? I've got 6 figures across them all but I haven't had a chance to follow my investment closely (my bad). I tried to offload them on SM but, at the time, they didn't sell so after about 7 days I cancelled the SM sale. I saw some updates saying 2 buyers are waiting to buy but that update seems to have disappeared. I think I also saw somewhere on this forum that the borrow has been declared bankrupt. The latest update goes back to a position that had been communicated weeks ago in that there's some investment money about ready to pour in and resolve everything (I, for one, am finding it hard to have any confidence in that update, and why was the previous update, about having 2 buyers, removed). Starting to get a bit nervous, alarm bells are ringing. I noticed the SM for these loans is clogged up again and probably can't shift them. I generally, as a strategy, am OK to hold loans to completion, but just wanted to ask the experts on here what they believe the risk on these loans to be.
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Post by charliebrown on Nov 1, 2016 14:11:10 GMT
Mine's been paid. The 1st of the month is the day I don't post any glass-half-empty doom and gloom, no whinging about rubbish updates, no worrying about being stuck with crappy looking loans that I can't shift. The 1st of the month is the day to worship SS and give thanks to the platform ...then maybe whinge a bit about how there's so little actually worth buying on the SM... I guess the stuff that lingers on SM is generally . If it wasn't then people would either buy it up or hold it. I've got a lot of that still in my portfolio, but as mentioned I won't dwell on that fact today, I'll be happy with the tidy little sum I just got paid in interest.
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Post by charliebrown on Nov 1, 2016 13:49:14 GMT
Every now and then loads of good loans appear with large sums of money available, I bought up quite abit when everyone was panicking over brexit. If you have £1000 to invest, my advice would be to chuck it all into 1 loan that you like the look of, when the next loan comes along that you like the look of, move some money into that. Keep going until you reach your desired level of diversity. I'm no expert at this and my total investment isn't that much more then what you are planning to invest. All my money has been shifted into 5 long term-ish 12% loans. At the moment I am not very diversified, but I'm happy with that to keep my money at 12% for as long as possible. This is what I was going to say. However, take it with a pinch of salt because I am not in any way qualified to give investment advice. If I were only investing 1,000 I'd be tempted to bung it all in 1 good loan with lots of days remaining and then watch that 1 loan like a hawk. My strategy has also been to prefer loans that are bricks and mortar based (as opposed to something like a piece of land, a farmer's field, a swamp/ quarry or a garden centre). I'm not sure maximum diversification is the way forward on Saving Stream. If you think about it, it only takes losses from one bad loan to wipe out months/ years of gains from many good loans. What I'd suggest is by all means diversify across all loans that meet your own criteria but if there aren't enough of those loans to get all your money invested then be strong enough to leave it on the sidelines or find another place for it. With 1,000 you should have no problems.
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Post by charliebrown on Nov 1, 2016 12:22:20 GMT
Mine's been paid. The 1st of the month is the day I don't post any glass-half-empty doom and gloom, no whinging about rubbish updates, no worrying about being stuck with crappy looking loans that I can't shift. The 1st of the month is the day to worship SS and give thanks to the platform
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Post by charliebrown on Oct 30, 2016 12:16:56 GMT
Can anyone give me the benefit of their FS experience. Are FS loans generally a good investment and is FS generally a good platform? I've been investing on SS over the past 6 months or so and so far have found it OK. However, it's not perfect (nothing ever is): there's quite a lot of short/ negative days loans, updates/ communications from SS are poor, it's quite hard to get as much money as I would like into quality loans (prefunding is meagure and SM is a frenzy when trying to grab anything decent). This is not a dig at SS, I'm actually a big fan, it's an enquiry as to whether FS is a good place to park some money (probably, over time, somewhere between 50-100k) The rates look great at face value, but what's FS's track record? Any experience to share? If you say go do your own research, I'd understand. However, if any regular FS investors have a spare 10 mins and wouldn't mind giving me a heads up I'd be grateful.
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Post by charliebrown on Oct 27, 2016 12:40:20 GMT
okay as one of the four i got my £300. So can we now assume that this forum and/or polls are completely unrepresentative of the real world then :-) I shall pop £50 on the SM to see how long it lasts Jack P jackpease : I never heard anyone in here claiming representation beyond ourselves. What I can see from the numbers, however, is that 859 lenders (at the time of writing) vs c. 2000 lenders in other loans speak volumes. There may be people who would argue that BH did not get involved for fear of getting small amounts. Fair point, but I think there were many, whether they frequent this forum or not is irrelevant, that did not get involved because they did not like this loan for one reason or another. I still think that this forum is very useful as its main purpose is, as with all forums, discussion. This forum is fantastic. If the views on here don't represent the masses then I'd rather be part of the minority At the end of the day, for a 300 quid investment does it matter whether it's 12% or 9%. The difference in capital growth would just about buy you a cup of tea
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Post by charliebrown on Oct 27, 2016 12:32:24 GMT
Hi All, We are planning on covering Saving Stream in our content schedule in the next couple of days. As part of this updated review of the platform, we are keen to speak with Saving Stream and address any specific questions/concerns retail investors have - namely around the default loan. Thus, I come to you! Please let me know if there's anything you would like clarified and I will raise the points with Saving Stream directly. Cheers, My question would be why was the valuation so wildly wrong? Do investors or SS have any recourse against the valuer? Wouldn't it be prudent for SS to get say 3 valuations and compare/ take an average. Even at a 70% LTV this one looks like if/ when it does get sold it will fetch nothing anywhere close to the valuation. Very very worrying.
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