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Post by chris on Jun 3, 2014 10:01:39 GMT
Thankfully chris is starting to state them. Unfortunately I can't announce everything now so a certain amount of trust is required. AI drew a lot of flak originally but is now widely used and hopefully not too maligned.
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bigfoot12
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Post by bigfoot12 on Jun 3, 2014 11:27:52 GMT
AI is great. I sold a few units last week, and as quickly as I hit sell they were gone. I got my cash, and the buyer(s) started getting interest straight away.
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dorset
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Post by dorset on Jun 3, 2014 11:50:22 GMT
Thanks for the advice - will consider giving it a go sooner rather than later. Ok have put in a load of AM bids this morning using AI - will see how many are taken up in the next week or so and update the forum.
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walktall7
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Post by walktall7 on Jun 3, 2014 13:07:20 GMT
I bought 3 units of Bu***** Wi** but not through AI so noboddy must not have had AI for it so there are opportunities out there.
I Then sold some boilerman 4 and that went to somebody through AI.
So there is a little bit of action out there.
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baz657
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Post by baz657 on Jun 3, 2014 14:43:28 GMT
I bought 3 units of Bu***** Wi** but not through AI Ditto last night but my three were solely using the AI. In fact the AI managed to grab me £1900 worth of units out of the £2500 I deposited on Sunday morning. I've got around 30 loans looking for a maximum of £300 each - it's doing pretty damn well so far for me.
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Post by chris on Jun 3, 2014 16:36:27 GMT
The only fair system is a queue. First come, first served. Decide the basic quantum of capital (say £100) and then rotate people in the queue. New investors should not get any priority over old investors. If this is true and can be demonstrated then I'll build it that way. But a basic queue can be gamed and does nothing to resolve the order in which lenders orders are fulfilled when thousands of them are placed electronically and instantaneously. As I can't fully describe what we're building take the example of FC's autobid system. Presume that hundreds of lenders sign up and the system automatically invests in new loans as they become available, what is the fair order for resolving that? If it's in the order they signed up to autobid then you build in permanent advantage for some lenders. Do you want auto investors to always hold advantage over manual investors, or the other way round? What about if people sign up for multiple accounts using multiple family identities in order to get multiple places in the queue? Should someone with five accounts be able to bid out five times quicker than someone who only uses one account? Should someone who blindly invests in every loan be able to deploy their cash much faster than someone who manually focuses on a couple of loans? I don't think the queue you describe is at all fair but I'm willing to be shown otherwise. The premise of your argument against the system I'm planning is that you personally will lose out, if you can show me how then I'll make sure that you don't. I have no intention of deliberately favouring any single group of users but it is a balancing act and it will need fine tuning over time. In response to your edit: Unfortunately for those who do have the time to invest in micromanaging their portfolio (not sure that's fair on those that have money to invest but not the time but that's another argument) automation tools are coming to every major platform, and I'd be utterly shocked if TC were not included. So gaining advantage from manually watching screens and having a faster finger than others isn't going to be possible on any platform of decent scale in the coming months. All I can promise is that all our lenders will have access to the same tools and that I'm here trying to work with you to make sure that you are not disadvantaged.
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mike
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Post by mike on Jun 3, 2014 16:56:25 GMT
chris what's radically wrong with the current AI set-up? Most people who have commented seem happy enough and I don't remember you detailing it faults. I could have missed that though to be fair. Mike
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j
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Post by j on Jun 3, 2014 17:00:52 GMT
My thoughts were of a queuing system, first come first serve with a maximum cap on hoe much to allocate per loan if a loan has a decent level of demand. If all AI request are then satisfied & there is still capacity, then it is back to who was the first in line again & repeat the same procedure. I think it's the fairest & most straight forward way. There is no discrimination & whilst new members might be initially disadvantaged, we were all new members once & had to contend with various aspects that favoured older & more seasoned investors on any given platform.
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Post by chris on Jun 3, 2014 17:03:57 GMT
chris what's radically wrong with the current AI set-up? Most people who have commented seem happy enough and I don't remember you detailing it faults. I could have missed that though to be fair. Mike Like all platforms we're evolving as the market changes, part of the next wave of changes will be more automation amongst other changes that will affect the offering. This will be true for all platforms not just ours, and AI was always intended as a building block for further changes. AI also isn't always that fair when it comes to dealing out loan units on the aftermarket due to it's asynchronous nature and that it works at an instruction level rather than on a per loan unit level, or other arbitrary grouping. This allows some users to invest larger amounts than would be perceived as fair if they are at the head of the queue rather than distributing loan units more evenly amongst all those waiting.
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Post by chris on Jun 3, 2014 17:05:23 GMT
My thoughts were of a queuing system, first come first serve with a maximum cap on hoe much to allocate per loan if a loan has a decent level of demand. If all AI request are then satisfied & there is still capacity, then it is back to who was the first in line again & repeat the same procedure. I think it's the fairest & most straight forward way. There is no discrimination & whilst new members might be initially disadvantaged, we were all new members once & had to contend with various aspects that favoured older & more seasoned investors on any given platform. As I've described a couple of times I can think of two big issues - one is where a user signs up with multiple accounts using different family or friends names, allowing them to deploy cash much faster than those who play by the rules, and it advantages those blindly investing in all loans over those who manually choose a handful to target. Edit: it also does nothing to choose a sort order for automatically placed orders nor integrates them with manually placed instructions. Edit edit: Also what happens when someone adjusts their target investment? If they change it from £200 to £100 do they go to the back of the queue? What if they just routinely put a £10 instruction in every loan when it appears on the site and then edit it up as they see fit at their leisure? Neither seems fair and if you always go to the back of the queue why not just stick an instruction of £1m against every loan and then use your cash balance to deploy funds as loans draw down / auctions start. What if you don't have cleared funds when it's your turn, do you go to the back of the queue? What if funds cleared seconds after it was your turn and were only late because that's when the ops team decided to run the repayments for that day. You're now at the back of the queue behind people who haven't been waiting as long as you yet you have cleared funds in your account sat there waiting to be deployed? From quite a few angles I personally think a simple queue is incredibly unfair.
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j
Member of DD Central
Penguins are very misunderstood!
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Post by j on Jun 3, 2014 17:21:28 GMT
If there is an issue of people having multiple account, the way to deal with it is restrict/cap how much can be bought/bid/pre-bid, etc. Even if that cap is in small amounts of say £20 each rather than £100 so that those who want to invest the minimum amounts are allowed to do so that way. It will also allow those multiple account holders to abuse the system in the least way possible when we are talking about £20 chunks at a time. There is no way a system that will please all can be achieved, but a first come first serve one, whilst it may look arbitrary, is the closest you can get to a universally fair system
EDIT All above imho of course, I'm sure many may disagree
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Post by chris on Jun 3, 2014 17:27:14 GMT
If there is an issue of people having multiple account, the way to deal with it is restrict/cap how much can be bought/bid/pre-bid, etc. Even if that cap is in small amounts of say £20 each rather than £100 so that those who want to invest the minimum amounts are allowed to do so that way. It will also allow those multiple account holders to abuse the system in the least way possible when we are talking about £20 chunks at a time. There is no way a system that will please all can be achieved, but a first come first serve one, whilst it may look arbitrary, is the closest you can get to a universally fair system Someone with 5 accounts would be able to deploy their cash 5 times faster than you no matter what the cap. You also fail to deal with all the other issues I've raised some of which are significant.
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Post by chris on Jun 3, 2014 17:39:03 GMT
Chris In my day job I've used many order-matching systems and earlier in my life I've even built a few. I don't know of any that expect me to tell them my current position in a security, whether I am diversified and whether my cash balance is bigger than the next person in the queue. These are not the business of order-matching systems! What does matter is the price am I willing to pay, the time I put in the order and whether I have funds to settle the transaction. When two people put in an order at the same price, the first person in the queue gets filled (perhaps whole order or a single unit), it's as simple as that. As for people signing up for multiple accounts using multiple family identities well unless it is fraud, I don't see a problem since legally they are separate people. As for automatic vs. manual investors, again I don't see an issue since it's not the business of the order-matching system to care whether it's a human or computer. If you don't want computers to dominate or families dominating the bidding then you need to control that in the operational setup of the market, not in the order-management system. I really think you are trying to solve too many issues with your AI system. If you want to change the nature of the market then you can "regulate" it (and some of us may not want to play in that market) but the AI system should just be about order-matching. AI isn't an order matching system, it's an automatic investment engine based at a higher level. Behind the scenes there is a separate order matching system that is used to fulfil all requests and that operates in a strict first come first served basis. Technically someone manually placing a bid can race the system as it's racing AI to talk to the order matching system, and AI isn't instantaneous nor does it hold atomic control over the lower systems. All our auctions are fixed rate so there is no competition based on price, only time. If I followed the advice here and implemented a simple queue then fully automated lenders with multiple user accounts, perfectly legal as you point out, who blindly invest in every loan rather than picking and choosing the borrowers they lend to carefully will be able to deploy their cash an order or two of magnitude faster than you. That's not fair on large swathes of our lender base and will not be implemented unless you can demonstrate why I'm wrong with worked examples.
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Post by chris on Jun 3, 2014 18:15:11 GMT
chris, I take exception when you say users who "blindly invest in every loan" should be regarded as "not fair on large swathes of our lender base". This kind of investment behaviour is a personal decision like any other. You've said previously that loans will be categorised so that the AI2 can be told to (blindly) only buy certain types of loan so this is already something that, I think, you want to provide for. It's different if they are attempting to gain an unfair advantage by opening multiple accounts but then doing that might allow them to practice all sorts of other undesirable stuff not just this perfectly rational and understandable investment behaviour. The elephant in the room is quite visible I know. Do you think the thousands of zopa and FC members are careful with each and every loan decision they make? You actually make my point for me. No where do I say it isn't a valid strategy - it's perfectly valid and if my language hid that fact then I apologise. However it is only one strategy and the system shouldn't discriminate in it's favour or in favour of any other strategy (if we can help it).
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j
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Penguins are very misunderstood!
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Post by j on Jun 3, 2014 18:18:12 GMT
If there is an issue of people having multiple account, the way to deal with it is restrict/cap how much can be bought/bid/pre-bid, etc. Even if that cap is in small amounts of say £20 each rather than £100 so that those who want to invest the minimum amounts are allowed to do so that way. It will also allow those multiple account holders to abuse the system in the least way possible when we are talking about £20 chunks at a time. There is no way a system that will please all can be achieved, but a first come first serve one, whilst it may look arbitrary, is the closest you can get to a universally fair system Someone with 5 accounts would be able to deploy their cash 5 times faster than you no matter what the cap. You also fail to deal with all the other issues I've raised some of which are significant. Chris, I'm slightly at a loss here. I fully comprehend that someone who has 5 family accounts will be able to deploy 5 times the amount to invest than say me with my sole account. But if they are only allowed to buy on AI on say a loan on AM, is it really going to make a huge difference whether they managed to buy £20 or £100 worth? If you were talking allowances/caps of say £1k each, then I would fully agree there.
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