Mike
Member of DD Central
Posts: 651
Likes: 446
|
Post by Mike on Jan 5, 2016 5:05:09 GMT
Rather than ban bots, I think SS should open up a nice API so everyone can easily write their own. A simple badly-written example would pop-up on the forum no-doubt.
As it stands, I am in no rush to write a 'bot' to interact with the interface currently available. But I also don't see the need to ban them; life's not fair and there is no need to start inventing rules and regs to artificially make it appear more 'fair'. Some people are cleverer and more desperate to learn & code bots. Let them win, their drive is stronger than mine, they deserve it. That's my take. Seems fairly anti-capitalistic to try to manipulate natural market developments to me. The only way to go is an API open to all!
|
|
littleoldlady
Member of DD Central
Running down all platforms due to age
Posts: 3,045
Likes: 1,862
|
Post by littleoldlady on Jan 5, 2016 8:43:59 GMT
I don't know for absolute certain that there are bots running, though I am fairly sure. But it amuses me when people post evidence that there are not. Firstly you can rarely prove a negative. Any bots will be programmed to behave in ways dreamed up by the author, including trying to masquerade as a very fast human, being selective about the loans purchased and stopping at certain limits. They will have to navigate the site just like a human and so will be subject to the same site induced delays. Just because humans can get loans sometimes proves nothing. Bots are everywhere on the net. The really surprising thing would be if there were not any on SS.
But until they are against SS T&C they are not unfair IMO. I believe that the majority of trades on the NYSE are computer generated.
|
|
pom
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,922 
Likes: 1,244
|
Post by pom on Jan 5, 2016 9:00:09 GMT
Personally whilst I hope SS do whatever they can to deter bots I think the whole debate is pretty academic at the moment as demand is currently so much higher than supply - I think anyone looking to get much on the SM at the moment given how small the newest loan was has unrealistic expectations. As we saw in Dec, if we get a few more/bigger loans go live close together there'll then be plenty available on the SM.
|
|
Investboy
Member of DD Central
Trying to recover from P2P revolution
Posts: 564 
Likes: 201
|
Post by Investboy on Jan 5, 2016 9:59:14 GMT
Disclaimer: I don't have a bot
Bots are great! And we all here should appreciate them. Why?
1. You can dump any chunk of a loan, even few pence and it disappears without a trace. Manual/sane bidder would ignore it and only buy whole pounds or round numbers.
2. You can dump old / suspicious loans and someone will gladly take them off your hands. Yesterday I saw loads of "-X day" loans being bought after the usual new loan re-balancing process.
3. Main purpose of SM is to allow investor to reduce their holdings and withdraw some/all funds. And SS are great at this. Last month I had to reduce position on one of my accounts. And by the time I listed last part everything was gone.
4. Personally I gave up on trying to diversify using SM. There is a nice pipeline with some big loans coming. And I bet some of they will not be filled for days/weeks. If I had new funds I'd pile into the big ones and then slowly sell out to release funds for the new loans. And because of the brilliant bots that will buy my parts in milliseconds I can do this.
5. New prefunding algorithm is the best to date (still can be improved) and I'll be using it to diversify. Just requires a bit of patience.
Embrace the bots!
Also I think SS made a statement that they are not detecting any bots.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2016 12:09:33 GMT
Some Bot is now placing loan amounts of 50p every few seconds ---- please STOP.
This sort of activity is not in the interests of Savings Stream or its users.
|
|
|
|
Post by hartshay on Jan 5, 2016 12:28:11 GMT
Somebody or thing is having a laugh...
I have been playing about trying to invest 50 ps... Managed a quid before I got bored!
|
|
will
Member of DD Central
Posts: 107
Likes: 8
|
Post by will on Jan 5, 2016 12:31:41 GMT
I'd say it's the same "person" buying it all back at 50p a time ... 'n<stars>1' Likely a bot undergoing field tests .....  |
|
|
|
Post by hartshay on Jan 5, 2016 13:26:58 GMT
lol... they are doing bigger amounts now.... I am filling a few moments on a break by snaffling bits and bobs...
|
|
littleoldlady
Member of DD Central
Running down all platforms due to age
Posts: 3,045
Likes: 1,862
|
Post by littleoldlady on Jan 5, 2016 15:39:01 GMT
Disclaimer: I don't have a botBots are great! And we all here should appreciate them. Why?1. You can dump any chunk of a loan, even few pence and it disappears without a trace. Manual/sane bidder would ignore it and only buy whole pounds or round numbers.These are more likely to humans. What happens is that when £30.27 appears two (or more) people try to buy it. The faster one bids £30 and gets it and the other one gets £0.27. 2. You can dump old / suspicious loans and someone will gladly take them off your hands. Yesterday I saw loads of "-X day" loans being bought after the usual new loan re-balancing process.
These might also be humans. In order to get anything on the SM you have to bid quickly without time to study the small print.
|
|
adrianc
Member of DD Central
Posts: 10,003
Likes: 5,139
Member is Online
|
Post by adrianc on Jan 5, 2016 17:47:37 GMT
Yesterday I saw loads of "-X day" loans being bought after the usual new loan re-balancing process. Anybody ignoring the time remaining has now had an extra four months interest on each of the 4 twins, and five months interest on 21. I'm starting to wonder why I'm not taking advantage of the short-life loans...
|
|
sam i am
Member of DD Central
Posts: 697
Likes: 555
|
Post by sam i am on Jan 5, 2016 18:01:20 GMT
There is plenty of time to study the small print while waiting for loan parts to appear on the SM. Note the ones that you would like to buy so that if/when they appear you can grab them quickly. But even if you buy a part you didn't really want, don't worry. You can (currently) sell it again in about a second. But you knew that already. So all with a smiley face
|
|
mikes1531
Member of DD Central
Posts: 6,453
Likes: 2,320
|
Post by mikes1531 on Jan 5, 2016 19:02:02 GMT
... but I had enough time to navigate from sales page to available loans and the loan was showing so must be one of the slower ones. : Your experience may be different from mine, but ISTM that while the available loans page is reasonably quick to change when a new part is offered for sale, it doesn't seem to be nearly as quick to change back to the 'All loans are fully funded' page. The way I test this is, when a part appears for sale, rather than clicking to go directly to the purchasing page, I right-click and open the purchasing page in a new window. Then I can watch amount the shown as available on the purchasing page decrease to nothing -- or already be nil by the time I get there -- and then see how much longer it takes after the part has been sold completely before the available loans page refreshes and the part disappears.
|
|
mikes1531
Member of DD Central
Posts: 6,453
Likes: 2,320
|
Post by mikes1531 on Jan 5, 2016 20:26:44 GMT
... but I had enough time to navigate from sales page to available loans and the loan was showing so must be one of the slower ones. : Your experience may be different from mine, but ISTM that while the available loans page is reasonably quick to change when a new part is offered for sale, it doesn't seem to be nearly as quick to change back to the 'All loans are fully funded' page. The way I test this is, when a part appears for sale, rather than clicking to go directly to the purchasing page, I right-click and open the purchasing page in a new window. Then I can watch amount the shown as available on the purchasing page decrease to nothing -- or already be nil by the time I get there -- and then see how much longer it takes after the part has been sold completely before the available loans page refreshes and the part disappears. I've just tried the above 'test' on a £30 part of PBL006 that became available a little while ago. When I went to the purchasing page, the amount available disappeared in a few seconds. The page showing the part to be available, however, has never refreshed, and continues to show the £30 part to be available. That has continued for over 50 minutes now. I don't know what will cause that page to refresh, but I presume it will eventually. (I haven't been watching the available loans page in another window to see if any other parts have come and gone in the meantime, but it would strike me as a bit unusual if there had been no SM sales for nearly an hour at this time of day.)
|
|
|
|
Post by GSV3MIaC on Jan 5, 2016 21:11:07 GMT
This is probably going to depend on the browser you use, and the hardware you are running it on. The (script on the) page is =requesting= a refresh every 4 seconds, but that'll only happen if the window in question gets a chance of some CPU time .. not an issue on a quad-core PC (for most browsers) but likely to take forever on some phone or tablets or whatever. With firefox you can turn 'web developer' on and watch the action (or lack thereof) .. on a PC at least.
|
|
mikes1531
Member of DD Central
Posts: 6,453
Likes: 2,320
|
Post by mikes1531 on Jan 5, 2016 22:31:10 GMT
This is probably going to depend on the browser you use, and the hardware you are running it on. The (script on the) page is =requesting= a refresh every 4 seconds, but that'll only happen if the window in question gets a chance of some CPU time .. not an issue on a quad-core PC (for most browsers) but likely to take forever on some phone or tablets or whatever. With firefox you can turn 'web developer' on and watch the action (or lack thereof) .. on a PC at least. I'm using a desktop PC with an Intel i7 processor, so CPU power/access shouldn't be an issue. But something odd may be going on. My original Firefox window on the Available Loans page still is displaying the £30 PBL006 part. Meanwhile, my newer window pointing to that same page showed the 'All loans are fully funded' message for a while. Then a part of PBL004 -- can't remember whether A or B -- appeared, and then it disappeared on its own and the page went back to displaying the 'All loans are fully funded' message. That might have been triggered by Reload Every, which I turned off in the original window because it would have disturbed my experiment/test, but it did happen quite quickly.
|
|
