Sing the platform praises.

I think P2P industry will have some interesting months and years ahead of it. I like and use AC's GBBA, 30DAA and QAA as a more automated method of P2P. You pay for this, with lower returns but the risk is "reduced" because of the provision fund and the way the 30DAA and QAA pay on the 1st of each month.

I'm currently invested in FC quite a bit, I've never actually had any issues so far, and I see alot.. alot of FC bashing on these forums so until further notice I'm holding any large further investments into P2P to see how things pan out in the next few months.

I have a question, I don't mean to hijack the thread, but talking about risk appetite. I understand the idea of a balanced portfolio across different cash investment types for retirees and those looking to expand their pension pot. But what about for people such as my age, 18-19 who run self employed businesses and whos situation to takes risks can be more forgivable. Me personally, I haven't been around long enough to fully flesh into all different cash investment types, sticking only to AC, FC for around 30 percent of my liquid and  the rest in ISA/Bonds and savings with the banks ofc. Looking into real estate currently, but lets not get too of topic 

Hahaha I know I couldn't agree more x3. However it is only because my current business is producing a very neat profit margin quarterly (5 figures) and requires no further investment. I originally put my profit into ISA's and savings solely but was honestly a laughable rate of return (especially regarding Business savings accounts; anything between 0.05 percent and 0.15 is the norm)
So I decided to invest the figures like all of us here into other areas of investment. 18 or not, there's a good reward for saving early :3.

But to keep on track with the thread, I was thinking of a dipping a toe or 2 into SS in a few weeks.

Well done Harland, sounds like you're an astute young man. Investing early is the way to become a millionaire!

If I were 18 (Im 43 now) and investing all over again with what's available now, here's how I'd invest:

60% into stock index tracker fund (US, not FTSE)
20% P2P
10% Global Bond Tracker fund
10% cash isa

You can change these allocations depending on your risk appetite and also as you get older. I've been through some severe economic ups and downs so this allocation would make me sleep comfortable at night.

PS. Forgot to add, buy and hold forever and keep buying through the lows and the highs. Only time you can lose money in the stock market is when you sell.

Out of interst. Why US tracker over FTSE? I know the FTSE is overweight some sectors and has a lot of low growth(at least cyclical) sectors, that would put me off.

And a very small amount of companies, amounted to the majority of the FTSE100's dividends.  And these dividends are far from guaranteed, and many of these companies may need to cut dividends. The FTSE is high on financials, oil and comodities, and low on tech and growth.

I've been investing in P2P since 2009 and now have about half my assets in 10 different platforms.

I have been winding down on some of the "loser" platforms and no longer lend to businesses.

I do see danger ahead - if asset prices crash then lending on places like FS becomes very risky. I've done OK so far, except for putting too many eggs in the carpets loan! Also some P2P companies are spending lavishly (I've visited some of their offices) and as someone who works in cyclical IT, that's always ominous.

Property is also risky. In my last job I worked for a city based property law firm and you can do all the due diligence in the world but property *is* inherently risky.

I did max out my ISA this year. I like the covered call funds (Schroeder Income Maximiser, Insight Equity Income Booster) as I just like collecting their chunky dividends. Also I do a bit of trading and have never lost money trading my favourites RDSB and GSK.