Secondary Market just NOT working

Sounds to me like it's working too well.

It wouldn't be working if you couldn't find a buyer.

Seems to be bot driven, odd bit's I see go quicker than I can refresh the page, if I look at investor activity in live loans someone has been trading, and not just the 1p bits.  Just have to wait for new loans and pre-funding for me atm.

Thanks for that, let us all chill out in January, while we have this type weather...

I suggest user names of buyers are shown. There are people hiding behind anonymity which leads to abuse.

I joined Saving Stream shortly before "Bot Wars" broke out. However, if I was joining today, I'd probably be leaving tomorrow.

Having watched bots being tested, without any sanctions being applied to the culprits, I can only conclude there's a distinct lack of leadership behind the scenes. Granted, their business model means that finding credible borrowers will always be their highest priority, but keeping lenders happy doesn't appear to feature at all on their list of concerns right now, making me wonder if they have more pressing problems that they're not telling us about! After all, how difficult would it be to send out an email that threatens to freeze the buying rights entirely of offenders, and cash out all their recent investments??

If SS cannot even address the problem with a simple mailshot, I fear for their future.

Whether or not the core offering remains the same or reduces over time, the bot problem will continue at some level (certainly during quieter periods for new loans) unless it is tackled and resolved. savingstream have a strategic choice to make between:

a) Sticking with the status quo (on the basis that the core function of the SM is to provide an exit route for sellers, which it's certainly delivering currently!) and tacitly accepting that anything goes bot-wise on the SM. This will of course lead to continued complaints in perpetuity from "normal" lenders...

b) Putting in place new rules, technical barriers and penalties to try to prevent bot-users from taking over the SM, whilst sticking with the same core "first bid wins" SM functionality. This will lead to an ongoing workload of monitoring, debating and responding as bot-users become ever more sophisticated in "looking like" normal users (eg. not picking up every part listed, going "dark" for periods of the day, varying their speed of response, etc.)

c) Fixing the problem once and for all by creating an AC-like allotment model for the SM, where buyers set targets for the loans they want more of and parts are divided amongst those with unfilled targets when they're offered for sale.

Option c) is not without its technical challenges but, once built and enabled, consigns the bots problem to history and means SS management can focus on the dramatically more important task of sourcing and funding high quality loans.

And no, I don't regard bringing in SM premiums as a sensible option d). I profit handsomely elsewhere (FC, ReBS and now FS) by charging premiums to sell loan-parts to newer / less demanding / time-poorer lenders but it's certainly not a model I'd suggest a simple and equitable platform like SS should adopt.

SS charge borrowers 18% interest, but because it's deducted up front, that makes the APR very nearly 22%. On a comparative basis, we get paid nearly 12.7% PA, meaning that their margin is more like 9.3%, i.e. their cut of a £1million loan is about £93,000, while accepting little or no risk.

Ok, they do have significant back-office costs, but if the problem is a shortage of borrowers due to high interest rates, there should be room to reduce this margin.