oldgrumpy
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Post by oldgrumpy on Dec 7, 2014 19:49:06 GMT
"I have always though that First Class could justify a small charge for each minute logged on to the site. I just can't believe it's still free."
Shhhh, Miss Piggy!! Don't you be giving Fumbling Catflaps ideas. 
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sl125
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Post by sl125 on Dec 8, 2014 10:19:04 GMT
I don't see a problem with flippers and auto-bots, as they keep the market liquidity up. But I do see a problem when an individual bidder can control an auction in a monopolistic manner.
Take the recent £52k A loan (**23). Taking out the British Business Bank's stake, that leaves about £47K for investors to bid on. But at 8:20pm on Friday, the B**ton Wanderer placed a staggering £21k in £100 bids at the highest marginal rate in the space of 3 minutes. By a strange coincidence, the borrower appears to have accepted the loan very shortly after. So this one bidder now controls over 40% of the loan.
FC's T&Cs are quite badly worded in this regard:
4.2 says "...which can be increased by increments of £20 to a maximum bid per business of £2,000. " The "maximum bid per business" is an interesting one. I suspect they mean maximum amount per bid, even though one can have multiple bids per business. Or do they really mean a maximum bid per business of £2k?
4.5 is perhaps more relevant: "...loans, a single lender is not permitted to bid for loan parts in a loan which add up in total to more than 20% of the requested amount for that loan if that lender is an API User". But again, rather odd wording: why is the maximum bid per loan set only for API users but not for general users?
If this was an isolated case, I wouldn't be so worried. But I notice this on many occasions with this one particular lender somehow controlling an auction prior to early acceptance, owing to having a ridiculously large holding account balance at his disposal.
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Post by yorkshireman on Dec 8, 2014 10:45:20 GMT
I don't see a problem with flippers and auto-bots, as they keep the market liquidity up. But I do see a problem when an individual bidder can control an auction in a monopolistic manner. Take the recent £52k A loan (**23). Taking out the British Business Bank's stake, that leaves about £47K for investors to bid on. But at 8:20pm on Friday, the B**ton Wanderer placed a staggering £21k in £100 bids at the highest marginal rate in the space of 3 minutes. By a strange coincidence, the borrower appears to have accepted the loan very shortly after. So this one bidder now controls over 40% of the loan. FC's T&Cs are quite badly worded in this regard: 4.2 says "...which can be increased by increments of £20 to a maximum bid per business of £2,000. " The "maximum bid per business" is an interesting one. I suspect they mean maximum amount per bid, even though one can have multiple bids per business. Or do they really mean a maximum bid per business of £2k? 4.5 is perhaps more relevant: "...loans, a single lender is not permitted to bid for loan parts in a loan which add up in total to more than 20% of the requested amount for that loan if that lender is an API User". But again, rather odd wording: why is the maximum bid per loan set only for API users but not for general users? If this was an isolated case, I wouldn't be so worried. But I notice this on many occasions with this one particular lender somehow controlling an auction prior to early acceptance, owing to having a ridiculously large holding account balance at his disposal. I think it goes without saying that if Libor and Forex rates can be manipulated then P2P is open to exploitation.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Dec 8, 2014 12:17:22 GMT
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Post by pepperpot on Dec 8, 2014 15:55:27 GMT
"Now that we have passed over £25 million lent on property, we will be running this promotion down."
Down to what? It sounds like the hope is to pull the cb completely, if so, Funny Cards might find property loans aren't as popular. If there is a requirement for underwriting these loans, that will come at a cost, why not keep offering that cost (or maybe just under) to us mere mortals as well?
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sl75
Posts: 2,092
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Post by sl75 on Dec 8, 2014 16:45:47 GMT
I don't see a problem with flippers and auto-bots, as they keep the market liquidity up. But I do see a problem when an individual bidder can control an auction in a monopolistic manner. This seems only a problem to me if the auction is at a fixed rate, or if the "monopolistic" bidder is bidding at the minimum bid rate (and even then it seems a matter of opinion). Otherwise, the way the auction format works, anyone else is welcome to bid earlier and/or lower than the so-called "monopolistic" bidder... I see no reason to ban certain bidders who have funds available from filling the balance of an auction[1] if other potential bidders are unable or unwilling to do so. [1] whether this is the initial filling, or the filling "at a more sensible rate" in cases where the initial bidders have bid too high.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Dec 8, 2014 17:40:32 GMT
I object to the approach which dumps 50% of the auction value in on hour 1, thus preventing autobid users from getting a look in (OK, this is 90% caused by the stupidity of autobid, which tried to fill auctions evenly, and thus mostly bids on unwanted cr&p, but still ..), and the one which dumps huge sums in with 30 seconds to go, knowing full well most people won't be able to respond, even if the FC site hasn't collapsed (or failed to return money). Both of those are clearly game playing against known weaknesses in the system. If t'were me I'd probably a) fix autobid and b) not close an auction until the bid rate dropped below some agreed value of £/minute (so yeah, popular beanfests could run and run). And yeah, I also objected to people buying 60% of an auction at MBR and thus locking others out, although that is less of an issue now (and so by extension, yes I object to 'whole loans' too).
But then, as someone said, I am apparently easily irked. 8>.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Dec 8, 2014 18:33:22 GMT
b) not close an auction until the bid rate dropped below some agreed value of £/minute (so yeah, popular beanfests could run and run). Would they, though? In the short term, they might, but since nobody would know when the auction was actually going to end - other than "Not whilst I keep pumping bids in", I think it'd fairly quickly settle to people bidding to their personal minimum acceptable rate, then just sitting back and waiting to see if they were in. It'd probably be a win for damn near everybody. I'm assuming there'd be some minimum guaranteed auction period - probably the same as the current week - after which the "Are we all done, Gents? Very well, then... <fx: gavel>" would kick in.
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blender
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Post by blender on Dec 8, 2014 18:51:40 GMT
"Now that we have passed over £25 million lent on property, we will be running this promotion down."
Down to what? It sounds like the hope is to pull the cb completely, if so, Funny Cards might find property loans aren't as popular. If there is a requirement for underwriting these loans, that will come at a cost, why not keep offering that cost (or maybe just under) to us mere mortals as well? Yes, down to zero as soon as they can. As I see it the word 'promotion' is significant because if there is a floor above zero then it is not a promotion, or an incentive to lend, but a part of the general return on lending. And in that case the tax treatment might need review - retroactively. The cash back must go down and the interest rate should go up as necessary - but of course there can be future promotions.
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Post by davee39 on Dec 8, 2014 19:57:41 GMT
Auction gaming is pertinent since there are currently several large loans with big sums sitting at the highest rate.
This potentially benefits all manual bidders since it forces the auction to close at a higher rate than it would if the mass of minimum rate bidders entered the race. The strategy then appears to be to let the bids drop out and then pile in at the end, surprising unsophisticated manual bidders and ending up with a large proportion of a high rate loan.
I would have no objection to any of this (indeed my little contribution benefits) as long as I can actually get bids in at the end. I have concluded that it is near impossible to re-bid fast enough to get the best rate so I go in with bids .1% , .2% and .3% below so I can usually end up with something.
I suspect, though, that fixed rates will be introduced for large loans to stop all this, and provide better rates for the borrower.
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Post by chielamangus on Dec 9, 2014 11:00:12 GMT
Having fun while you make money is what it's all about. I have always though that First Class could justify a small charge for each minute logged on to the site. I just can't believe it's still free. One man's meat .... It's a complete waste of time if one ends up without any bids. And those damned bots usually beat me - especially with my slow (very very rural) connection. Still, I suppose it beats shovelling sh** which is another activity I have to do sometimes.
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sl75
Posts: 2,092
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Post by sl75 on Dec 9, 2014 22:19:36 GMT
I object to the approach which dumps 50% of the auction value in on hour 1, thus preventing autobid users from getting a look in (OK, this is 90% caused by the stupidity of autobid, which tried to fill auctions evenly, and thus mostly bids on unwanted cr&p, but still ..), and the one which dumps huge sums in with 30 seconds to go, knowing full well most people won't be able to respond, even if the FC site hasn't collapsed (or failed to return money). Both of those are clearly game playing against known weaknesses in the system. At what point in the auction should someone who desires up to 50% of the auction at a rate they find acceptable make their bids under your proposed rules? Apparently the first hour and the last 30 seconds are "out of bounds". If such a bidder were to place bids at some point in the middle of the auction, would you also campaign against game playing by other users who undercut them by only 0.1%? ... or is that kind of game playing ok in your rulebook? (The completely wasteful "undercut top bid by only 0.1% at a time" game, especially when played by a larger player who makes large numbers of small bids rather than the larger bids they could easily afford, annoys me far more than the "fill auction with large bids" or "drop top rate of auction by a significant amount with large bids" strategies, both of which save huge amounts of resources compared to an equivalent scenario where the same endpoint were reached with hundreds or thousands of small bids).
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Dec 9, 2014 22:36:51 GMT
I already suggested 0.1% steps were ridiculous, and I think 50% of any auction is pretty unacceptable whenever it's grabbed.
I'm not sure I support the 'charge by the minute' suggestion, but I did already suggest elsewhere maybe there should be a modest charge per bid. That ought reduce server load and game playing both.
P.s. did FC block your IP address too? Apparently when the site was flailing they went on a general bot hunt, but I doubt that was really any of the problem, unless someone's bot was running wild (not guilty, with http logs to prove it).
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blender
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Post by blender on Dec 10, 2014 10:47:21 GMT
Back to the subject of the OP and FC's plans to fix bugs. Concerning the double sold loan parts, FC seem to be occasionally doing reconciliation runs (capital plus net earnings equals total?) and correcting double sales by removing the spurious transactions. They have done this twice to my account in the last few weeks, covering three or four loan parts in total. Now I know what is happening it seems acceptable to me.
Ref the bug which creates double sales - in my case it seems to be related to buying bots. In the first case a mistaken listing for sale jumped upon by an opportunistic bot, but in the last week a very active and welcome bot buying up parts of property loans in large numbers. Quite possibly the bot itself is buying the same part twice, but too much to go through to check. (Don't ban this bot please, FC)
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Dec 10, 2014 17:23:23 GMT
It's weird because your 'sold parts' report (sell page, sold parts iframe) never (afaict) shows a double sale, but the transaction report manages to .. since the transaction report doesn't show 'who it was sold to', I can't check and see if the double sales were in fact to the same person/bot. I suspect you might be right - the SM (buy parts) page is one clunking antique which hasn't worked right for ages (shows parts which don't match filters, doesn't show parts which do, etc. etc) so it would not be hard to buy more than once, especially if a bot was doing it at high speed (there is a random number injected into the page requests IIRC, presumably to try to prevent caching problems, but it is onbly a 4 digit random number so it's not going to be awfully reliable).
It should not be possible .. a buy transaction ought to be an indivisible unit, and the transaction report ought line up with the sold parts report (allowing as how the latter drops all parts from loans which are repaid, or defaulted. 8<.) But then Fairly Colourful are masters of the impossible ..
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