puddleduck
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Post by puddleduck on Oct 18, 2017 12:43:01 GMT
I'm not invested on this platform yet, so thanks for the insight macq Was perusing the Octopus board wondering whether this was another platform worth adding to my roster. Quite a few things appear to be a little too random for my liking though, not just their understanding of statistics. It seems a bit like AC's GBBA, where you can end up with some unintended consequences if you don't drip feed the money in over time (I exited pronto and stuck to the MLIA) There are some chunky loans in there, and we don't don't know if they are mansions, blocks of flats or commercial - for instance £8.7m in CM1? Could be an office block, could be retail, could be a block of flats. The loan book also seems very London-centric, and high-value London resi is not the most resilient part of the market these days? The LTVs are OK for pure resi, but I'm not sure I like the preponderance of 70% LTVs if there is commercial mixed in there and the min diversification is 10 loans! My key question: what does Octopus Choice offer that can't be done better with Kuflink (for those who prefer to self select, and like to see skin in the game) or AC's property backed account (for those wanting fire & forget)?In my opinion, nothing. When you break down all the clever marketing that OC engage in, it leaves us investing in loans with around 65% LTV for 4% or so, which in my opinion isn't really worth the risk and is why I will be moving funds from OC to kuflink as and when they have more loans available. yes sadly i am coming to the same conclusion. I have been drip-feeding in money trying to get diversified but I seem to just end up with another chunk I am already in for the most part.
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puddleduck
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Post by puddleduck on Oct 18, 2017 13:01:24 GMT
just following up and I have made a withdrawal request - my efforts at diversifying and getting into as many loans as possible seems to have failed dismally - looking at the 'number of loans' prior to withdrawal I seem to be in around 100 pounds per loan, and still seem to around that ratio with the remaining funds.
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macq
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Post by macq on Oct 18, 2017 21:17:19 GMT
while i have mentioned before my worry of payments making some loans bigger then others.There does seem to be a reasonable turnover in loans so each reinvestment is making the parts smaller.While we are told the past is not a guide to investing i have so far not had or seen any defaults mentioned so in some ways until that happens i can't make a judgement on the diversification as its all about the recovery process
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puddleduck
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Post by puddleduck on Oct 19, 2017 13:29:18 GMT
while i have mentioned before my worry of payments making some loans bigger then others.There does seem to be a reasonable turnover in loans so each reinvestment is making the parts smaller.While we are told the past is not a guide to investing i have so far not had or seen any defaults mentioned so in some ways until that happens i can't make a judgement on the diversification as its all about the recovery process My issue I think I covered here: p2pindependentforum.com/thread/7228/cash-drag?page=3The issue seems to be that the site seems to always show 20 or 30 open loans, so you put more money in, only to find the money is going to other loans you hold. So I then tried doing payments below 200 as this should be spread at 10 per loan. But even so my loan spread wasn't really increasing as expected. I don't want to get into a default situation to test the water, but averaging over 100 in each loan is too top heavy for me. I would prefer new money to be held in the account, rather than topping up existing holdings. I think I made a pretty good suggestion in that post, which seemed to have fallen on deaf ears sadly. Assetz Capital offers 5.50% on a similar property account, and you can literally hold pennies through the spread there, so the money coming out of Octupus is going there. Higher rate, and better spread.
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macq
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Post by macq on Oct 19, 2017 21:22:35 GMT
while i have mentioned before my worry of payments making some loans bigger then others.There does seem to be a reasonable turnover in loans so each reinvestment is making the parts smaller.While we are told the past is not a guide to investing i have so far not had or seen any defaults mentioned so in some ways until that happens i can't make a judgement on the diversification as its all about the recovery process My issue I think I covered here: p2pindependentforum.com/thread/7228/cash-drag?page=3The issue seems to be that the site seems to always show 20 or 30 open loans, so you put more money in, only to find the money is going to other loans you hold. So I then tried doing payments below 200 as this should be spread at 10 per loan. But even so my loan spread wasn't really increasing as expected. I don't want to get into a default situation to test the water, but averaging over 100 in each loan is too top heavy for me. I would prefer new money to be held in the account, rather than topping up existing holdings. I think I made a pretty good suggestion in that post, which seemed to have fallen on deaf ears sadly. Assetz Capital offers 5.50% on a similar property account, and you can literally hold pennies through the spread there, so the money coming out of Octupus is going there. Higher rate, and better spread. When i looked at the AC account a couple of weeks back i am sure it said in the T&C that if there where 50 loans available your money would be invested @ a 2% rate if only 5 loans then your money would be invested @ 20% each and so on in proportion which means you could still end up with big loan parts i guess.So hopefully the spread of pennies works out - i will let you be the guinea pig and see how you get on
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puddleduck
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Post by puddleduck on Oct 20, 2017 7:35:07 GMT
i will let you be the guinea pig and see how you get on Well I actually started this about a month ago, and I can tell you with an initial payment of 100.00 to test the water, I am in 13 loans - I have 1p (!!) and 13p in some loans, the highest holding is 23.85. I tried 'drip feeding' to Octupus, so for example if I put in a payment of 100.00 there, I was finding that I was buying into existing loans for the most part, and my 'no of loans' wasn't really increasing much, meaning money was topping up existing holdings - very poor for diversification purposes. The issue for me is that 4.1% with inflation at 3% just doesn't seem worth it if I can't spread the risk.
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Post by jordan on Nov 26, 2018 10:40:08 GMT
Hi all, I created a new thread the other day entitled 'Octopus Choice Investment Report available', but thought I'd post here too given it has been such an active thread. We (Orca) released our in-depth due diligence report on Octopus Choice last week. Read our blog if you want the condensed version (link to report contained within) and view our Octopus 'Analytics' profile for loan book analysis. Read BlogDownload ReportView AnalyticsThe report includes in-depth loan book analysis as well as a full drill-down into the product and provider. Hopefully of some use..
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