is
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Post by is on Sept 14, 2014 13:32:01 GMT
Tal**** is a denial of service attack against Funding Circle. There's no two ways about it. Obviously FC won't block them, because they are happily funding auctions, so a bit of a conflict of interest there. IMHO if anything is a "denial of service attack" it is the people/bots making thousands of tiny bids per auction. There is no denial of service for the vast majority of bidders, who don't play these last-minute games of brinkmanship in an effort to squeeze the last possible 0.1% out of each and every borrower. In effect, all FC auctions have a "blind bidding" phase in the last few seconds, when any final bids made will not be able to take other bidders actions into account. ISTM the best fix would be to make the "blind bidding" phase explicitly defined, rather than as a side-effect of system performance and level of bidding activity (currently it can effectively be less than 10 seconds on some auctions, but perhaps over a minute on others). For example, a "blind bidding" phase explicitly defined to be for the final 10 minutes of the auction would result in no bids made during those last 10 minutes being revealed to any other bidders until the auction was over. Any bidder who wished to commit funds during the final 10 minutes, as well as any bidder outbid during those 10 minutes, would have their funds held until just after the auction, and all would find out the result of their bids only afterwards. It would perhaps act to discourage the dumb robots (and some humans manually following a dumb robot strategy) that seek to achieve a rate 0.1% below the top by repeatedly rebidding at each possible rate all the way down to wherever the auction ends up, and instead encourage more bidding at an "honest" best and final rate. Sounds like fun, would look forward to building an auction model to place bids optimally in such a scenario. However it disadvantages low cash capacity bidders even more, if anything. At least at the moment they can spot big tranches and try to come in 1bp under. Server load from 100s of bids could be reduced drastically as discussed above, anyway.
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maxmarengo
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Post by maxmarengo on Sept 15, 2014 13:16:46 GMT
Came across this for the first time today - rate dropped .4% in the last 30 seconds and my money did not come back to bid. Not a big problem, as I would not take the loan at the rate it finished at.
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fasty
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Post by fasty on Sept 26, 2014 18:52:19 GMT
I got stung like this today myself. A large A grade loan was descending below 11% in the last few minutes (sadly can't remember the loan number). With less than a minute to go, it looked like a massive bucket of cash was dropped in at around 10.8%. The numbers just went berserk despite page refresh. I immediately rebid 4 parts at 10.7% and each bid seemed to be have been accepted, BUT despite this The auction finished with a highest bids above my latest bid rate, and it took a few minutes for all my funds to be returned.
I'm not against a fair "bidding war", but what we are seeing appears to be strategically designed to exploit weaknesses in the FC algorithm, almost akin to a DOS attack.
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is
Posts: 108
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Post by is on Sept 27, 2014 0:23:55 GMT
Tall one (or whoever) is welcome to any A @ 10.8% - for me the A cut-off is at least 11.5 now.
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oldgrumpy
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Post by oldgrumpy on Sept 30, 2014 13:18:26 GMT
OK - all ready? 7975 Any bets on what time tallgit will appear, how much, and at what rate? My guess is 10.5% about 80 seconds before cut-off 42 x £9600. Goodbye to my 10.6% then  Result: OK, it was about 60 seconds before cut-off, 10.3%, 36 x £960. Not enough to knock out my 10.4% bids, old son.  |
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Sept 30, 2014 15:06:03 GMT
Well done my old fruit, but I'm with IS on this; the things will probably be selling on the secondary market at 10.5%, so why buy them at 10.4% .. if not these exact parts, then something very similar.
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oldgrumpy
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Post by oldgrumpy on Sept 30, 2014 15:16:16 GMT
Well done my old fruit, but I'm with IS on this; the things will probably be selling on the secondary market at 10.5%, so why buy them at 10.4% .. if not these exact parts, then something very similar. I bought at 10.4% because that was the top final rate, and there was only about £11K of that. Longshanks paid 10.3%. Do you reckon many will be selling at a discount anytime soon? IS was on about a (possibly suspect) A loan. This one was (supposedly) A+. (Anyone detect an air of suspicion regarding FC's competence in allocating risk bands?) (edit again).............. added to which I reckon this will be easy to sell on the SM later if I want to.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Sept 30, 2014 16:07:04 GMT
Ah, me bad .. That halfway reasonable for an A+, if you believe the rating. For an A it would be averageish, at best.
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fasty
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Post by fasty on Sept 30, 2014 17:33:20 GMT
I just managed to nudge in with Old Grumpy at 10.4%, connected on my phone. It would have been easier on a really fast internet connection.
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Post by longjohn on Sept 30, 2014 18:14:48 GMT
Tall*** appears to have changed tactics. After bidding at the three minute mark in previous auctions, yesterday he waited until the last 90 seconds before bidding £25,000+ and locked up the auction until it timed out on two loans I had bids on. One minute I had 5 x £20 sitting well below the top rate, the next, auction all locked up and bids wiped out with no chance to rebid.
I've put in a complaint about the bidding platform locking up and am awaiting FC's response.
John
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oldgrumpy
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Post by oldgrumpy on Oct 7, 2014 19:08:43 GMT
Well done my old fruit, but I'm with IS on this; the things will probably be selling on the secondary market at 10.5%, so why buy them at 10.4% .. if not these exact parts, then something very similar. I bought at 10.4% because that was the top final rate, and there was only about £11K of that. Longshanks paid 10.3%. Do you reckon many will be selling at a discount anytime soon? IS was on about a (possibly suspect) A loan. This one was (supposedly) A+. (Anyone detect an air of suspicion regarding FC's competence in allocating risk bands?) (edit again).............. added to which I reckon this will be easy to sell on the SM later if I want to.  Waste of time again. Please note: This auction (7975) was not accepted as the borrower is no longer in need of these funds. Thanks, FC.
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blender
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Post by blender on Oct 7, 2014 20:38:48 GMT
Probably 'no longer in need of these funds' because the Borrower has found other funds at a better rate - and, if so, quite right too. I am not now so unhappy about all except £40 being outbid in the feeding frenzy.
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Waste of time again. Please note: This auction (7975) was not accepted as the borrower is no longer in need of these funds. Thanks, FC.