Pipeline loan v SM - any preference

no offence, but can you go off and do a bit of research first? You will find the answers or opinions to your question if you care to expend a little effort...

Welcome to the message board turtle,

A few weeks ago, it was 'fastest finger' to get any money on the secondary market and pipeline loans were few and far between...

At the moment we are spoilt for choice, but the lean times may come back again so to speak, when it is difficult to invest extra money.

My advice is to get the money on loans that have the longest number of days to expire first and then diversify when you can, by buying what you like and selling and spreading the risk.   I am sure there will be others who can advise you better than me...

Cooling_Dude, one of the 'p2p forum resident' Saving Stream, who is on a 'forced sabbatical' at the moment, was usually helpful to new members.  So we all await his return.  There are other board members who will help you though.

BTW, I am not a Saving Stream expert and don't work or advise them in any capacity, other than post on this message board.  Hope that was helpful to you.

If you want to get some funds invested immediately PBLs 87 and 88 are essentially still new loans that haven't quite yet filled (left the pipeline a couple of weeks ago). There are 3 or 4 other fairly recent ones currently with availability (64 / 73 / 77 / 80) and 25 will likely turn into a DFL shortly, at which point holdings will be rolled over into the new loan. The SM has a lot less available than it had even a few days ago so the cupboard may soon be bare again (famine mode!). Otherwise, I'd set your pre-funding targets and wait for new ones to launch over the coming weeks.

Hi Turtle,
I'm fairly new to this too, and only went for pipeline loans for the first few weeks. The problem with this was that I ended up getting allocated huge amounts. Then we had some more money to invest, and instead of waiting for the pipeline I spread it around lots of loans on the secondary market. Yesterday I sold parts of our bigger loans, and reinvested them on the secondary market in order to have a bit more balance.

So I would say it doesn't matter too much what you do - you can wait for pipeline stuff or just put some money into things that are available on the secondary market. That way you will start earning 12% interest right away. Do read at least the brief info about each loan though, as it's a bit pointless to put money into something which is on the brink of repaying. It's also a good idea to avoid SM stuff that there is a lot of, as it could be harder to sell if you need to/want to at a later date. But even saying that, my worst time to sell something was one week, and that was when I deliberately put up a piece of Bedfordshire land right in the middle of a huge glut of it on the market to test what would happen). Most stuff I've sold has been bought up the same day, often within a couple of minutes.

So basically, your investments are fairly fluid, whatever you start out with. Have fun investing.

And not to be a total wet blanket (I'm very keen on SS myself), but do read that as "...the valuation that opines the asset should sell..."

Thanks all for your views so far and your welcomes.  I have requested a prefund of one of the loans and also invested small amounts in 2 loans on the SM.  I will only be investing small amounts in total (certainly nothing to risk the roof over our head!) but it's interesting to invest in something a bit different to the usual high interest current accounts and S&S ISAs. I'm fully aware there's no real protection but I'm ok with that and will stick to amounts that wouldn't really matter if I lost them.