Peer to Peer Lending makes CNBC
February 11th, 2008 | Zopa, LendingClub, Investing, ProsperI’m currently sitting at my computer and CNBC is interviewing Renauld Laplanche from LendingClub about peer to peer lending. They also mentioned Prosper and Zopa in a text blurb at the bottom of the screen. Prosper should get themselves an interview on CNBC. :)
In other news “AIG said it would need to alter the way it values credit default swaps involving collateralized debt obligations. CDOs are funds that contain slices of bonds, some of which are backed by mortgages.” (link)
I found this picture particularly interesting to sum up the current environment.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Hilarious pic.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8082730452536323779
Google video on Prosper. You’ve probably seen it before, but one point the speaker stuck on has been plaguing lending at Prosper. At times, the number of lenders or the activity of lenders reduces risky loans to returns expected by AA borrowers. It would be helpful to graph activity of bidding, either by numbers of bids alone, or by money volume of bids. Basically, graph the sum of all dark-blue lines of individual lenders. A lender would then know when to back off lending when the liquidity is too great.
February 20th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Rich_Lather: Interesting, I need to think about it for a bit and see what type of charts/tools I can come up with to do this.
March 25th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Surprisingly enough, my loan portfolio has actually been holding up surprisingly well (after being stung by a couple of large lates in Q3 2007). It will be very interesting to follow default activity over the next 6 months.
March 29th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
My strategy is slightly different. Prosper (and myself) is banking on the recent activity of credit card companies who have quickly tried to shore up their portfolios by drawing down lines, jacking up rates and adding fees everywhere. I had a BofA card that went from 17 1/2% to 26% in just a few months. I paid that off to zero immediately and tossed the card in the shredder (I left the account open b/c otherwise it will lower my score).
I have one other credit card that I only use for rental cards. Everything else I rely on a mix of accounts that I have. A checking, 2 savings, E-Trade, an IRA for retirement, and I have a few CDs maturing over 2 years I bought when rates were a bit higher.
Because I live in Philadelphia, I have no need for a car [yet, I have one]. I plan to get rid of it and that money that will be free’d up on the $175 that I was sending to the Kinney every month I can now plow into Prosper.
90% of the time, I’ve been hunting for AA, and A borrowers who are doing high-interest card consolidation. Every week there’s new listings for AA and A borrowers for insanely high rates (above 13%). That’s the game I am playing now. I’ll have to wait until August before I can finally say that decision was wise.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I agree with you Philly. I’ve noticed people complaining about the rate of defaults and couldn’t help but notice that they were also complaining about having to wait several months to gain a few $$$. These complainers were the ones who invested $50 over 20 loans at D or higher credit scores trying to hit the so called “home run” every time. My thinking would be to invest $200 over 5 loans on AA - B borrowers with a return of 10% - 13%. I’ll have less likely a chance of default and a bigger return. Or is this a crazy idea???
April 13th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I think both of you have the right idea about where the ’sweet’ spot to invest on Prosper is. A couple of things you guys might want to look at to help returns. :)
1) Smaller loans have a lower default rate
2) Clean listings (0 delinquencies have a lower default rate, low inquiries)
This is based on my own lending experiences… (All my lates/defaults came in the first 6months of my investing back in 2006. Pretty much perfect since 2007.)
April 14th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Thanks for the feed back. I will choose wisely. I’m about an hour away from my funding being added. So wish me luck and hopefully it will be a rewarding experience. :)
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
good info. amicable dlog