Where is the Access Account Trading facility? (AC)

It did, back in march. But that can only happen when there is liquidity in the accounts and relies on sales of loans to new investors, so not just yet.

Overall there has been a strange set of arguments going on. The main purpose of the SM is to allow someone desperate for cash to escape at a discount.

It has been suggested that the selling queue could increase due to arbitrage. This could indeed happen if people not currently selling suddenly join the selling
queue in order to buy at a discount and then re-sell. This is unlikely to be significant.

   - The highest discounts are expected one the market opens, yet it take months to realise cash for re-investment

   - New money will be needed to take out the sellers, even if the purchased holdings are immediately re-offered for withdrawal the net withdrawal queue will be unchanged, if some new money sticks and is not withdrawn the queue could drop

   - 3.75% return on investment looks very attractive compared with alternatives

As has been indicated elsewhere, parts of the stock market offer good value and potential high yields. buying at a discount may suit some people as a long term hold, it is hardly a worthwhile arbitrage option.

The outcome is therefore unknown, but I see the new market as a necessary feature in an extraordinary environment.

While I've previously voiced concerns about how AC have handled all this (and would happily repeat them), I understand why an SM could be seen as sensible here and will be of benefit to many investors.

That said, this line comparing the situation to the stock markets - as has previously been articulated by AC themselves - is complete nonsense and incredibly disingenuous. The choice of an informed investor to invest in the stock market vs. to invest in a blackbox P2P holding with no marketisation is incredibly different. While the underlying logic is sound, you can't simply retrospectively apply this markestised logic to the AC accounts and pretend it was always that way. It wasn't, and the goalposts are significantly changing. There has been a lot of discussion in the last few pages about AC holdings not being 'worth par' now. But this product was never meant to have a 'worth' in that sense. Whether this is of (net) benefit to investors will likely depend on each individual's circumstances; but anyone complaining about the material alteration in this offering compared to what they bought into has a very sound basis to their argument.

"To say that P2P is unrelated to other risk assets is pure delusion" - I'm not sure I understand this. What do you mean by 'unrelated'? My point is that this was an asset with no market, and is now becoming one with a market.* Thus, comparisons with other marketised assets are anachronistic. You can have a debate about the nature of the underlying assets and what they amount to (as I said the logic of this is sound), but I'm looking at this from a more legal perspective as to what was sold to consumers.

In this regard, I would also dispute your suggestion that this "needs" to happen. Again, you seem to be looking at what is the most sensible solution for the majority of investors; whereas I am talking about a slightly different point.

(*Also, for these purposes, it doesn't make sense to talk about "P2P" as a homogenous asset class. There are clearly very different offerings out there. My point relates entirely to the exact form of offering of AC's Access product.)

For sure - and I'm only trying to make the quite narrow point that I'm making regarding anachronistic translation of a marketised logic to a non-marketised product. Any investor feeling disadvantaged by that has every right to feel aggrieved, and I find the comparison with the stock markets particularly frustrating given that it's what AC themselves tried to tout on here and in their emails in a pretty disingenuous way.

But no I'm absolutely not making any specific allegations about mis-selling or otherwise - this wouldn't be the correct legal terminology, and I would never be so reckless as to make such accusations on a public forum in any case! 

This was debated in some detail a while ago, so I'm reluctant to drag it all up again. But, just briefly:

As I've said, this will depend on individual circumstances and is about the entire AC 'solution' to the current issues (I don't think you can separate the introduction of the SM from the AC decision not to just process the withdrawal queue in order of request as, for example, RS is doing* - this is the whole reason why an SM is 'needed' because currently no processing of the queue is really happening, only the return of repayments). There will be investors, for example, who were right at the very front of the queue so, with a simple queuing system, might've got their money out pretty quickly even with minimal liquidity available. Their only option now to achieve the same effect is likely to sell at a discount.

Again, I think you're looking at this from the perspective of "this is very helpful for the majority of investors". I am purely making a point about the transformation of the product which, if it does disadvantage any investors, those investors would have every right to feel aggrieved. My point is not that AC should not be doing this; or that having a simple queue system would be 'better' somehow. If even only one investor was disadvantaged from this, they would have a very solid basis to their concern.

(*Before anyone jumps on this, no this is not a suggestion that RS is somehow doing things well or that everyone is delighted with how things are going over with RS!)

No FIFO should definately apply as this will stop flippers in their tracks and allow the secondary market to have its true function of allowing those desperate for their cash access to it.