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Post by meledor on Jan 12, 2016 20:41:43 GMT
To be honest I'd rather SS reduce interest rates to 10% to cure the issue of excess demand than have to endure SS turned into a clone of Assetz.
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ilmoro
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'Wondering which of the bu***rs to blame, and watching for pigs on the wing.' - Pink Floyd
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Post by ilmoro on Jan 12, 2016 20:51:45 GMT
To be honest I'd rather SS reduce interest rates to 10% to cure the issue of excess demand than have to endure SS turned into a clone of Assetz. All that cutting the rate would do would be to shift the demand (presumably followed by bots) elsewhere, MT or FS perhaps. Perfectly happy with 12%, perfectly happy with a SM that does exact what it was designed to do 'offer a facility to sell any investments you have made'Id rather they got a couple of the multi-million pound loans onto the platform so we can all start posting about whether the extra 100k that has just appeared/disappeared is from SS or an UW or a flipper. Anything but bloody bots! 
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Jan 12, 2016 21:11:42 GMT
As for buying on the secondary market I found myself up at the wee hours over the Xmas break and picked up a fair bit. Ive not tried to buy in january, Has it changed to the point where you still can't buy at 2am when the bots are sleeping? There's no question that the SM is working very well for anyone trying to sell parts at the moment. brokenbiscuits: The situation regarding buying has indeed considerably changed since Xmas. Back then, it was reasonably possible to pick up parts manually. Now it isn't. Even in the wee hours, any parts that appear as available tend to disappear before you can manually bring up the loan's web page. The exceptions to this are the loans that are in relatively low demand, namely those with negative, or very small positive, time remaining. I invite you to try it. If lightning strikes, and you're able to buy a part, if you don't really want to keep it you'd be able to re-sell it in a matter of seconds.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Jan 12, 2016 21:17:11 GMT
If SS knocked 2% off lenders and borrowers, deal flow would rocket up and we'd get a lot more - albeit at less %. I'm not convinced. AC have cut their interest rates to lenders -- they had been around 11-12% before and now most loans offer 9-10% -- and their deal flow hasn't improved. (I know they've said that it will shortly, but until the jam arrives tomorrow I'm going to remain sceptical, though I do hope they can deliver.)
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Post by p2pguy on Jan 12, 2016 21:19:52 GMT
This thread is currently at 3 pages of people trying to change the SM with various complicated systems. At a risk of repeating myself. IT ISN'T complicated. Just BAN bots. Change the T&C's to stress that bots are banned and anyone using them will find themselves not able to use SS. It's not complicated, it doesn't need to copy other p2p companies, it doesn't need convoluted queuing systems, or bidding processes, it just needs to get rid of automated systems. Is it really that difficult to understand and implement.  If I were a bot developer, I would just add a randomised delay to its actions, making it difficult to say with certainty - and SS can't afford to start banning non-bots. Sure, the bot would probably pick up fewer parts, but probably still more than we do manually. I like the simplicity of the SM, but if people really needed it changing, perhaps some kind of auction system like you get on some stock exchanges. For example: - The first bid on a loan part starts a 10 second auction.
- All other bids for the next 10 seconds join the auction.
- Auction closes, and the pre-fund allocation algorithm is used to distribute the loan part among the people that took part in the auction.
- Any remaining quantity is placed back in the market.
It would still take people with large deposits a while to invest, but it least they could get something. While still allowing the bots to exist to make sure there is constant liquidity to exit positions. I'm sure it could be augmented with some kind of positional allocation, so those first to the auction get more of what they wanted (I believe that is something like how German government bonds trade).
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Jan 12, 2016 22:02:17 GMT
Quite easy really, most people require around 5-10 seconds to purchase a loan part. Anything that buys something quicker than say 5 seconds after a loan appears, and does it regularly with a similar purchase time, will be a bot. I assume bots are able to purchase within a second or two, something that most people just can't match doing it manually. I'm pretty sure I can buy a loan part quicker than 5 seconds when I'm seriously fighting for it. You'll have to set the time lower. But you'll still catch any well-written bots. You've undoubtedly upset GSV with your 'second or two' comment - he gets all sniffy when anyone says his Dove bot takes more than half a second. It might take as long as 3.5 seconds, since it'll be 3 seconds before it's guaranteed to see a new 'available loans' update. After that, yep .5 sec tops. But if we want a level playing field I demand that all non-bot users should have to wear boxing gloves so they can't type faster, or more accurately, than anyone else. 8>.
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sam i am
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Post by sam i am on Jan 12, 2016 23:25:24 GMT
I'm pretty sure I can buy a loan part quicker than 5 seconds when I'm seriously fighting for it. You'll have to set the time lower. But you'll still catch any well-written bots. You've undoubtedly upset GSV with your 'second or two' comment - he gets all sniffy when anyone says his Dove bot takes more than half a second. It might take as long as 3.5 seconds, since it'll be 3 seconds before it's guaranteed to see a new 'available loans' update. After that, yep .5 sec tops. But if we want a level playing field I demand that all non-bot users should have to wear boxing gloves so they can't type faster, or more accurately, than anyone else. 8>. Whatever the rules, I'll play by the rules. But until the rules change, it's just a shame that I'm not clever enough to write a bot 
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ablender
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Post by ablender on Jan 12, 2016 23:40:04 GMT
This thread is currently at 3 pages of people trying to change the SM with various complicated systems. At a risk of repeating myself. IT ISN'T complicated. Just BAN bots. Change the T&C's to stress that bots are banned and anyone using them will find themselves not able to use SS. It's not complicated, it doesn't need to copy other p2p companies, it doesn't need convoluted queuing systems, or bidding processes, it just needs to get rid of automated systems. Is it really that difficult to understand and implement. If I were a bot developer, I would just add a randomised delay to its actions, making it difficult to say with certainty - and SS can't afford to start banning non-bots. Sure, the bot would probably pick up fewer parts, but probably still more than we do manually. I like the simplicity of the SM, but if people really needed it changing, perhaps some kind of auction system like you get on some stock exchanges. For example: - The first bid on a loan part starts a 10 second auction.
- All other bids for the next 10 seconds join the auction.
- Auction closes, and the pre-fund allocation algorithm is used to distribute the loan part among the people that took part in the auction.
- Any remaining quantity is placed back in the market.
It would still take people with large deposits a while to invest, but it least they could get something. While still allowing the bots to exist to make sure there is constant liquidity to exit positions. I'm sure it could be augmented with some kind of positional allocation, so those first to the auction get more of what they wanted (I believe that is something like how German government bonds trade).
An interesting idea. Can you give an example (ie. using numbers) please?
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nick
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Post by nick on Jan 13, 2016 0:44:32 GMT
The bots do make it a lot harder to buy loan parts on the SM, but it is still possible. With a simple browser extension alerting me to when there is some activity and subsequently pressing F5 and manually clicking I estimate I'm successful 20-25% of the time and have purchased more than £50k in the past 2 weeks (and most of this in 2-3 days last week when I was most focussed on trying to invest). It is a major pita, but it is still possible to grab parts manually if you invest a bit of time which I guess is itself part of the rationing process.
The big positive which I highly value is liquidity. I think I could completely liquidate my whole portfolio in minutes and have the cash transferred to my bank within hours if needed. This wasn't always the case and there were instances when I lost interest due to loan parts not selling same day.
Hopefully SS will be able to remedy some of the issue by bringing on a lot more supply of loans to the market to help bring a bit more balance to the market. We saw that the Chelmsford loan helped satisfy the market directly via the PM and indirectly (by lenders selling other loans on the SM to fund their PM purchase) for at least several days. This must be way forward rather than imposing artificial barriers on the demand side irrespective of the good intentions.
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Post by sunspot on Jan 13, 2016 2:36:54 GMT
The simplest way to defeat bots while maintaining the same overall style of operation is to introduce handicapping. There are several ways this could be done, but here's one...
When a user is successful, apply a 10 second penalty for the next sale, reducing by 1 second with each sale missed, or if no sales follow, by 1 second every hour. Thus a single penalty would expire entirely after ten hours, or ten sales. Penalties could be additive too, up to a predefined maximum of, say, 20 seconds.
Bots would still have an advantage on slow days (and when no one else is watching) but this would severely curtail their activity, and also force them to be far more selective, lest they miss a juicier piece of the action later.
This would also be fairer to less skilled typists.
Nevertheless, I still believe queued prefunding is a far better solution. It would also tick the "equalities" box, which the current system certainly does not, because disabled users are clearly at a disadvantage. Indeed, if a complaint were raised on this basis, the current system would almost certainly have to be scrapped, because the cost of fighting such a legal action would be prohibitive.
In the meantime, a mailshot threatening to cash out bot-users entirely would probably be effective.
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Investboy
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Trying to recover from P2P revolution
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Post by Investboy on Jan 13, 2016 19:45:11 GMT
And the winner is .... Re-CAPCHA! Simple, easy, quick to implement and stops bots no problem.
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cooling_dude
Bye Bye's for the PPI
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Post by cooling_dude on Jan 13, 2016 20:11:47 GMT
And the winner is .... Re-CAPCHA! Simple, easy, quick to implement and stops bots no problem. Yes; it should stop the BOTS, but will it stop people moaning about having to tick a box or select a couple of pictures!
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Post by p2pguy on Jan 13, 2016 22:50:39 GMT
If I were a bot developer, I would just add a randomised delay to its actions, making it difficult to say with certainty - and SS can't afford to start banning non-bots. Sure, the bot would probably pick up fewer parts, but probably still more than we do manually. I like the simplicity of the SM, but if people really needed it changing, perhaps some kind of auction system like you get on some stock exchanges. For example: - The first bid on a loan part starts a 10 second auction.
- All other bids for the next 10 seconds join the auction.
- Auction closes, and the pre-fund allocation algorithm is used to distribute the loan part among the people that took part in the auction.
- Any remaining quantity is placed back in the market.
It would still take people with large deposits a while to invest, but it least they could get something. While still allowing the bots to exist to make sure there is constant liquidity to exit positions. I'm sure it could be augmented with some kind of positional allocation, so those first to the auction get more of what they wanted (I believe that is something like how German government bonds trade).
An interesting idea. Can you give an example (ie. using numbers) please? Sure, below is a timeline of what might happen with this approach. A variant of this is used to trade warrants on some asian stock exchanges. I know of one in particular that does this (although the name escapes me right now), which intends itself to be used by retail investors, but also has electronic interfaces which get used/abused by professional bots. // timeline expressed as T+n, where n is the number of seconds since time T.
// the names in [] represent the state of the market
// example where loan part is fully allocated:
T+0: [open] £500 loan part for sale
T+5: [auction-open] user A bids for £100, auction starts
T+6: [auction-open] user B bids for £200
T+12: [auction-open] user C bids for £150
T+14: [auction-open] user D bids for £100
T+15: [auction-closed] loan part disappears from market
T+15: [auction-closed] user E bids for £50, rejected as auction is closed
T+16: [matching] following (what I understand to be) SS pre-allocation rules:
- round 1: A=£100, B=£100, C=£100, D=£100 (remaining £100)
- round 2: A=£100, B=£150, C=£150, D=£100 (all funds allocated)
// example where loan part is partially allocated:
T+0: [open] £1000 loan part for sale
T+5: [auction-open] user A bids for £250, auction starts
T+14: [auction-open] user B bids for £250
T+15: [auction-closed] loan part disappears from market
T+16: [matching] following (what I understand to be) SS pre-allocation rules:
- round 1: A=£250, B=£250
T+17: [open] remaining £500 of loan part put back on the market
I left out the skewing of quantity by order of joining the auction as I'm not sure exactly how this works in practice (I just know it is done).
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Jan 13, 2016 22:55:03 GMT
^ I like that...
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Post by sunspot on Jan 13, 2016 23:57:09 GMT
Yes, that's certainly doable, and would be an improvement on the current system. Also, with a captcha slowing things down, it would make more sense.
As things stand, I'm not sure I can be bothered with the secondary market, and the primary market seems to be stuck in low gear, so I'll probably look elsewhere to invest my money.
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