blender
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Post by blender on Feb 21, 2015 10:56:45 GMT
Thank you David42. Have not seen that but I had been thinking about sl75's post and had also concluded that he was right about the repayment schedule, principal, interest and fees, being calculated up front for each loan part and fixed. That would resolve the issue of the roundings in one operation up front, rather than having to calculate month by month. It does also explain why a purchaser has to pay the seller the accrued interest to date for the month, why part payments cannot be distributed and why a borrower repaying early has to pay the interest to the next repayment date.
Such a system does make it likely that we see calculated figures for current values, when we ask for them. That would mean that every time we log in the system has to calculate the accrued interest figure by doing a calculation for every loan part we hold, and that a page of loan parts for sale we ask to see includes a set of calculations for each part just for our request (presumably). The mind boggles.
I suppose it is just an example of how the manual lenders on the platform must be responsible for almost the totality of the real-time processing load? Compared with set and forget Autobidders for example, and also compared probably with institutional lenders. If you think about the problems and costs of running/maintaining/developing/answering for the system, it must be disproportionately spent on manual bidders who represent say 25% of the lending volume or less, and reducing.
So thank you sl75, always good to learn something each day.
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kmac
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Post by kmac on Feb 21, 2015 11:51:28 GMT
It also probably explains why loan parts cannot be split or amalgamated
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sl75
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Post by sl75 on Feb 21, 2015 15:33:17 GMT
I suppose it is just an example of how the manual lenders on the platform must be responsible for almost the totality of the real-time processing load? I think you over-estimate the resources required by a computer to perform simple calculations. Generating the actual HTML text that it sends to you will take far more resources than a few simple calculations, and it will have to do that anyway. The things that tend to slow them down involve interacting with "external" devices.
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blender
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Post by blender on Feb 21, 2015 15:48:50 GMT
Yes but does that not also point to the manual bidders, who are external, being the main problem for system performance? Autobidders are internal, require no HTML, and make one bid per loan. Institutions make one bid on a whole loan at a fixed rate and hold to completion. The API is not being made available.
I rather think that manual bidders are not the future.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Feb 21, 2015 18:44:27 GMT
I suspect that FC thinks the same thing, hence the focus on whole loans, fixed rate loans (where the whole process is lots simpler), etc .. although they continue to not do several things which could simplify the current system (fewer bid steps, for instance).
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Feb 22, 2015 17:20:37 GMT
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blender
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Post by blender on Feb 22, 2015 19:53:37 GMT
Hi GSV,
I cannot confirm but here is a sequence of sales of identical discounted loan parts on 18 Feb to one buyer in the reverse order. I cannot say over what period - but short, with no intervening sales. I do not think there would be many other identical offers. I have removed the first three identical digits. Please do not ask the order in which I listed them for sale.
Thinking about it, the random claim was in response to complaints that it was last in first out (with wonderful stats on time-to-sell for those that sold). Consider that the randomness may be in the selection of the lender whose parts to present next, the efficiency being in presenting all of the identical parts belonging to that lender before choosing another lender at random. That would explain your results.
4356
4302
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4517
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4519
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Feb 23, 2015 13:54:11 GMT
Yep, I guess it could be 'random by seller' (which means if a big flipper gets picked first nobody else will get a look in). Or maybe it is not random, maybe it is now FIFO instead of LIFO?
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Post by trilby on Feb 24, 2015 9:51:45 GMT
Looks like we've at least got nice new error pages to look at when it's broken?
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blender
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Post by blender on Feb 24, 2015 10:58:30 GMT
Yep, I guess it could be 'random by seller' (which means if a big flipper gets picked first nobody else will get a look in). Or maybe it is not random, maybe it is now FIFO instead of LIFO? I re-listed a large number (hundreds) yesterday pm, and am pretty sure that it is no longer LIFO. I doubt FC would like FIFO because it would ruin the time-to-sell statistics just as LIFO greatly improved those statistics they tried on us. It looks like random by seller, which should give fair time-to-sell statistics. That seems to mean that when a seller is selected, all (or at least many) of the qualifying parts are listed together. That would explain why sales occur in groups - especially when the buyer seems to be a well-funded bot. Quite how Autobid does it I am not sure, but I notice that an Autobidder will often take several property loans in one go - only one part from each of course. Autobid seems to act as a buyer, rather than a seller, acting for each buyer in turn as if the buyer were a manual bidder. So if random by seller, that is how Autobid will also select the sellers for each buyer it serves. Developing an understanding the process is a great help - so thanks for the OP.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2015 12:00:46 GMT
I've walked away from FC for a bit to focus on better returns elsewhere, but I thought I'd leave autobid on at high levels to tell me when things had improved. (yes I know I may buy some rubbish, but, I'm guessing that most of the time I'll be blown out before the auction finishes until rates come right). Anyway I'm struggling to understand what is happening. Does Autobid only run once a day at 5pm say?
I've asked FC after I noticed that their FAQs are not exactly very explanitory. If I get sense back I'll post, but maybe you guys already know?
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blender
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Post by blender on Feb 24, 2015 12:18:20 GMT
I've walked away from FC for a bit to focus on better returns elsewhere, but I thought I'd leave autobid on at high levels to tell me when things had improved. (yes I know I may buy some rubbish, but, I'm guessing that most of the time I'll be blown out before the auction finishes until rates come right). Anyway I'm struggling to understand what is happening. Does Autobid only run once a day at 5pm say? I've asked FC after I noticed that their FAQs are not exactly very explanitory. If I get sense back I'll post, but maybe you guys already know? I tried that at greedy rates (A+ 11%, A12% etc, no C-) while on holiday, on the account which would not bid too much. It seemed to bid on every auction fairly quickly and I did get one part in the £500k A+ loan (plus a lot more manually because it ran for two weeks). It did not catch any early closers. No SM purchases - at the rates I chose the bots would be there first. It may have a different procedure when you start it up, but I think the Autobid process is scheduled to start at certain times and to run through each lucky buyer in some sequence. The running of Autobid and the balance between PM and SM is something I believe Flexible Controls can adjust to suit 'market conditions' - and I think they need that. So its scheduling does not seem to be predictable (and maybe it crashes?).
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2015 18:18:43 GMT
Mellisa has kindly come back with the following (FC are responsive which is a real help);
"Autobid is designed to place bids randomly throughout the day, and so it will not place a bid on every loan that meets your criteria. This helps to keep the site stable and also means that no one investor has an advantage over another.
It is completely randomised, and therefore will not necessarily choose the oldest loan auctions and will not place bids at specific times of the day."
So, interesting to see that "it will not place a bid on every loan that meets your criteria" I've asked for a bit more detail, I can see the randomness-by-time is there to spread "fairness" to the various other people using autobid, but I'm not really sure why some loans will be excluded completely despite them hitting the criteria. I wonder what percentage will be excluded but I suspect it is too mixed up with the criteria and the changing demand/supply situation to get clarity on.
Still I'm not trying to win bids just monitor for better rates, I'll run it for a week and then finally reduce my remaining lending pot.
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blender
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Post by blender on Feb 24, 2015 19:53:37 GMT
Thanks Bobo - this is helpful. I think that one of the considerations is that Autobid is fed heavily at night by repayments, and some of that behaviour is aimed at spreading that large source of funds out over the following day. The new listings are generally in the afternoon.
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sl75
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Post by sl75 on Feb 24, 2015 21:32:41 GMT
I've walked away from FC for a bit to focus on better returns elsewhere, but I thought I'd leave autobid on at high levels to tell me when things had improved. (yes I know I may buy some rubbish, but, I'm guessing that most of the time I'll be blown out before the auction finishes until rates come right). Anyway I'm struggling to understand what is happening. Does Autobid only run once a day at 5pm say? I've asked FC after I noticed that their FAQs are not exactly very explanitory. If I get sense back I'll post, but maybe you guys already know? Autobid seems to take it in turns to process one lender at a time. It used to give each lender a turn about once every 2 hours - plenty fast enough for a high-level autobid to get you on the auction in time for a borrower who accepts the loan offer within a few hours. Now it seems to be going much slower. I'm unsure exactly how slow, but it take rather more than 24 hours for autobid even to consider attempting to bid on a newly-listed auction. It's unclear whether that's due to faults with FC's system or a deliberate design decision (perhaps hoping to smooth out the supply of funds to auctions that start at different times of day, etc.), but I've already seen anecdotal evidence of at least one lender withdrawing funds as a result (log on, see over £1000 of funds that autobid hasn't used, withdraw funds to bank - never mind that autobid SHOULD have used those funds if it was working properly - the user can see that in fact it DIDN'T, and doesn't really want to concern themselves with the intricate details). However, if autobid had been working efficiently and placing bids within a small number of hours, I've anecdotal evidence of a different (manual) lender [i.e. me!] who would have withdrawn funds by now, as the currently live bids on recent auctions would have been outbid long ago. If the autobid go-slow was deliberate, in order to retain funds "in the system" from manual bidders seeking "unusually high" rates, it seems to have been effective, however, I'd tend to bet on poor system implementation before Fantastically Cunning strategies... Edit to also reply to: So, interesting to see that "it will not place a bid on every loan that meets your criteria" I've asked for a bit more detail, I can see the randomness-by-time is there to spread "fairness" to the various other people using autobid , but I'm not really sure why some loans will be excluded completely despite them hitting the criteria. I suspect the ones that are "excluded completely" are the ones where the rate at which you've asked autobid to bid is no longer available by the time that autobid would have attempted to bid on it, and also the ones where you didn't have enough funds to place further bids after the "random" selection it got for you.
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