18% - too good to be true?

tonyr:  Can't you simply disable AutoInvest for the loans that you don't want it to buy any more of for you?  Or alternatively, why not just set your targets for those loans at your current level of holding?

I want to achieve more than this.   Let's split all loans into two sorts, those that have units available and those that don't.

Let's say that I always want to keep £200 for shrapnel, that is loans that don't normally have units available but come up occasionally.   I want the rest of my money to be invested in the loans that have units available (that have also passed my sniff test) - specifically I invest in the loan that'd got the least units available.

Let's say I get a loan repayment or I put more money into AC.   If subsequent amount of cash uninvested is less than £200 I don't want to do anything, if it's more then I want to buy something (right now Aberdeenshire WT) until there is £200 left.

Actually I'd like to do a lot more than this, I'd like to balance the whole portfolio for maximum liquidity, that is being able to sell every last unit in the shortest possible time.   That's quite a hard problem - but the sort of thing I enjoy.

I like tonyr 's liquidity target strategy, holding loans that have few loan parts available as that implies those people want the most and therefore he could get out of quickest if you want the money back. When we're strategising about giving different types of investors what they want and making sure it does what it says on the tin as best as possible one of the points is liquidity. Liquidity is worth something, worth a lot in my view and also lowers the interest rate. That's why short term savings accounts pay less than long term ones. We will bias towards pricing liquid investments lower than less liquid ones whilst still pricing for risk as well. Short term trade finance can pay a high rate per month but often has has less than ideal security so is priced high for that reason. Well structured invoice finance with a provision fund and a natural short term nature makes it liquid and safer and therefore a lower rate. Other things sit in the middle. Many people on this thread have high dashboard rates because of the 18% default interest rates on a few bridges and thats the nature of the bridging market where things don't go exactly to plan on average and the rates are higher and the problems to solve are greater but you have good first charge   security to back it up. Two of those bridges probably repay this week I hear and that I think that includes the default interest which will be nice to show lenders - don't know if I am in those two but quite possibly hence contributing to my 14.92% average. 

Hope I'm not too late to the party?
Finding myself deficient in plumbing, and possessing plenty of wind, I can only boast 11.04%.
Sign of my age probably.

The trouble with defunct plumbing is that just when you think its going to perform you're disappointed. I'll stick with wind if you don't mind - it rarely fails to perform. :-)

Your wind sweeping analysis takes my breath away....literally

As some have remarked here, the interest rate return given by AC is not very useful.  It merely shows the weighted average interest rate of one's current holding.  It does not indicate the actual return one has got over a period of time or what one will get in the future (unless one's pattern of holdings remains exactly the same AND there are no defaults).  I have turned mine off in the customisable dashboard since it is irrelevant. However, in the light of the very high returns being quoted in this thread I've just looked it up -  10.85 per cent.  Low in comparison with others here, but reflects my switch out of loans going into default mode*.  My real return (XIRR) in the year 2014 was in the region of 9.75 per cent (excludes accruing interest).  

*I have enough heart-stopping helter-skelter times on FC.  At my age, I prefer AC's more secure enviroment & higher net returns.  But it takes an age to run down one's holding with the FireCrackers!