LS shows 4.89% and Eric’s has 4.27%Number of late and 1 month late now is alarming! A few months from now when those hit my XIRR calculation ROI is going to look really bad.And with the Prosper mis-management team focused on trying to salvage the comp…

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Continue reading → Nov 2008 ROI 4.45%

A poster, onthefence, on Prospers.org pointed out that my first version of the APR calculator for notes purchased on Lendingclub’s secondary market failed to consider the increased value of a note which has a payment due in less than a month. So I made…

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• Federal Reserve Notes Small Size Notes Paper Money US Coins Paper Money

Continue reading → Improved Calculator for LC Secondary Market Notes

I’ve written a calculator for finding the APR on loans purchased on Lendingclub’s secondary market. It was a pretty quick write, so there may still be some bugs. I tested it with several examples and it was accurate, even for some really extreme case…

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Continue reading → APR on Lendingclub’s Secondary Market

With Prosper in its “quiet period” these charts may not be as useful, but eventually Prosper will emerge so I’ll continue to update monthly. If you haven’t been following these Late Loan Chart updates, you can find a description of my methods here in p…

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Continue reading → Late Charts Update–Oct ‘08

Still in the black! But not by much.Prosper finally got around to charging off most of my 4+ month late loans, $406.96 in principle and $83.58 in accrued interest and fees. The remaining 4+ month late loans have a loan value of $180.91.The 4 late and 4

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Continue reading → Oct 2008 ROI 3.91%

Loan value of 4+ month late loans totals $553.00 an increase of $8.68 since last month, got to love Prosper accounting for bad loans. Slight improvement from last month $704.55 - $553.00 is $151.55. But then there are two loans in the 3 month late ca…

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Continue reading → Sept 2008 ROI 5.40%

About a year ago I started lending money to African entrepreneurs via MyC4.com.  So far it did meet my expectations. The process of uploading money worked without problems, there were always enough loan applications to select from and the offered interest rates were high enough to allow for good returns despite the risks. The only [...]

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Continue reading → 7.9% ROI on my MyC4 loans in the past year

It’s been a while since I went through the trouble to see how my Prosper portfolio is doing, so here it is.

I use Excel’s XIRR function and count all loans 1 month late or more as having $0 loan value, 17 loans.

XIRR (ROI) = 8.06%

Average Loan Age = 511 days

I was a little surprised that the ROI went up since the last time I calculated it. I’ve had a bunch of loans slip into the death zone

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Continue reading → Sept. Performance Update – LC’s Prosper ROI

XIRR computed ROI after subtracting the loan value of all 4+ month late loans yields 4.78%, Eric’s has my ROI at 5.77%. LendingStats hasn’t been updated since mid August.After subtracting the loan value of all 4+ month late loans for the Prosper figu…

Continue reading → August 2008 ROI 4.78%

Has Prosper turned the corner and realized that lenders are the key to it’s success? The official Prosper Blog, which for so long seemed dedicated to attracting only borrowers, has focused its last three posts on lenders’ concerns. But that’s not all.O…

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Continue reading → Could it be?

I’ve been pretty conservative from the start as you can probably tell by the average lender rate on my portfolio. So far, it’s paid off. A while back, I decided I’d try a portfolio plan to increase my ROI. (In a future post, I’ll examine this sub-po…

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Continue reading → I’ll stick with handpicking loans for a while

Still in positive territory !LS has roi at 6.52% and Eric’s has roi at 7.29%And the late loans keep on rolling in.By my calculations after allowing for additional bad debt I made $1.57 on this portfolio last month.

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Continue reading → July 2008 ROI 5.73%

I started lending slow and conservative on Prosper. My plan was to continue for a year, then decide whether I wanted to continue and/or increase my investment.Things were going well in that first year, but I couldn’t convince myself there were enough g…

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Continue reading → Lesson Learned Using Fantasy Prosper

We’ve all seen it, I’m sure. The borrower quoting scripture or using his supposed piety to convince lenders their bids are safe.This discussion came up the other day on the Loans2U group discussion forum and led to some interesting research.Lendingstat…

Continue reading → Pious Borrowers & Prosper Lending

Most borrowers would have long ago given up, but mvbrothers2 never gave up. On her 57th listing, she finally funded her $1050 listing at a borrower rate of 37.45%.Her path to success on Prosper began with this listing in February, 2007 as an HR borrowe…

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Continue reading → Prosper Borrower Finally Funds on 57th Try!

http://www.prosper.com/lend/listing.aspx?listingID=372036Or is it?Really, why would someone with excellent credit be willing to pay such outrageous interest? And, why are lenders willing to bid on these listings?Michael Douglas, in the movie Wall Stree…

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Continue reading → Too bad if you missed this autofund AA, $25K @ 29.97%

This morning, I decided to create a Portfolio Plan to find listings with an estimated loss, even with a 35% lender rate. This plan is shared on my Prosper profile.As of this writing, 672 of the 2279 listings on Prosper are picked up by this plan–~30% …

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Continue reading → Listings You Don’t Want to Bid On

Fred93 has been keeping track of Late Loan Stats in the Prosper loan portfolio for some time now. While these charts make lending on Prosper appear about as profitable as playing Russian Roulette, I’m finding a much rosier picture by examining a subs…

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Continue reading → Lenders’ Loan-Picking Skills Improving?

New lenders can learn a lot from the various discussion forums dedicated to borrowing and lending on Prosper, but participation in these communities offers another benefit as well.Spending time reading the forums, one gets a lot of insight into minds o…

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Continue reading → Forum Lenders = Good Borrowers?

When I first began to lend on Prosper, I thought the safest loans would also be the smallest. It seemed many other lenders felt the same, because these listings were bid down to really low rates. It makes sense doesn’t it? Small loans have lower paym…

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Continue reading → Loan Amount and Delinquency

It’s easy to be attracted to the listings with really high rates, but I have always considered most borrowers higher risks who are willing to borrow money at exorbitant rates. Eric’s site offers us the ability to examine the late/default rates for …

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Continue reading → Lender Rate and Late/Default Rates

I’ve been pretty harsh on Prosper’s Portfolio Plans (PP) since they were introduced in October 2007.

This last January I wrote, “While the introduction of Portfolio Plans was a great idea for the rookie lender, I just don’t think that they will perform as well as estimated.”

The good thing is that I was right. The bad thing is that I was, err… right. I must admit that I only looked at one PP

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Continue reading → Portfolio Plans Growing Up

XIRR at end of June counting all 4+ month loans as worthless $403.02 in total loan value results in a return of 5.87%. Lending stats shows 6.97% and Eric’s has 7.66%Prosper continues to show a very optimistic value of $553.71 in gain a more realistic …

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Continue reading → June 2008 ROI 5.87%

I just went through my account details, and using Excel’s xirr function determined that my Prosper Lending ROI stands at 7.88% at the moment.

I was a little surprised at the result, considering I’ve picked up more late borrowers since I last reported. Fortunately the ROI still manages to hover between 7.5% - 8.0%. It is also hovering between the two ROI estimates given by Eric and Lendingstats.

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Continue reading → June 2008 - LC’s Lending Performance

Despite a record setting May 08, Prosper’s Conservative Portfolio Plan isn’t attracting much interest (pun).

It could be because the estimated return is only 5.10%.

There is a recent listing falling within the Conservative Plan. The interest rate offered on the listing is not high enough to attract PP bids from PP lenders that did not update their PP specifications and are still using the old

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Continue reading → 5.10% Not Attractive to Prosper Lenders

As of the end of may, XIRR is 7.35%, Eric’s shows 8.33% and LendingStats shows 8.60% (but it looks like that is from 5/27 so LS is behind)Snapshot of my account:The total loan value of my 4+ month late accounts stands at $300.83, two of the accounts…

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Continue reading → May 2008 ROI 7.35%

There is a forum thread over on prospers.org that got me thinking about why lenders have to depend on third party sites for their ROI figures. And I’m not talking about the ROI of other lenders but your personal ROI. Prosper has all the data necessar…

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Continue reading → Wondering why Prosper does not provide an ROI figure

LS shows 8.62% and Eric’s shows 9.33% (both of these have gone up in the last few days, on Sunday LS was 8.40% and Eric’s was 8.89%).There seems to be some screwup on the Lending screen payments received figures. Take a look at my screen shot from las…

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Continue reading → April 2008 ROI 6.36%

Prosper’s Portfolio Plans changed dramatically last night.

I haven’t had the time to really get into these yet, but the minimum bid rates on some of these segments are ridiculously low.

Here is the Conservative Plan’s minimum bid rates: (criteria can be found on Prosper.com)

Slice 1:
Minimum bid rate: 5.90%
Estimated loss1: -0.22%
Adjustment2: 0.00%
Servicing fee: -1.00%
Estimated return3:

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Continue reading → Portfolio Plans Changed Dramatically

To my utmost surprise, my only “Late” loan made a payment (wahoo!), so at the moment I have no “Lates”. Of course there are plenty of loans one month late or worse, but without any “Late” loan statuses, I know that at least for 15 or so days there won’t be any more loans falling off the cliff into Collection Agency territory.

I went through and recalculated my Prosper ROI using Excel’s XIRR

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Continue reading → Latest ROI Results

I’ve been perusing through the recently updated Bidding Guidance from Prosper (BG dated 4/14/08), and something jumped out at me.

The loan size ranges for each credit segment are all a bit, um, wonky. Maybe I should be a little more specific. The upper limit of the loan size ranges are wonky.

For example, the lowest loan size range for each credit grade is “less than $5,000” (or $0 - $4,999) ;

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Continue reading → Could You Spare a Dollar?

Quick Chimp Tip for the New Lender # 12
(part 14 of my Prosper Lending Presentation)

Diving head first into Prosper Lending without doing your own due diligence is like cliff diving without checking out the water below first. Prosper is, after all, only two years old. The data is young. The data is thin.

Relying on a numbers only approach could be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing

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Continue reading → Success is possible.

One of two 3 month late loans flipped to 4+ months lateNot a real bad listing for an EBut the subsequent listing in Nov showed some desperation, oh well…..Not like this deadbeat: Pro226 who managed to manipulate the credit score to go from an E to an…

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• Real Estate Opportunities

Continue reading → ROI 6.75% as of April 2 down 1.35% in two days!

My XIRR computed ROI has rebounded at least temporarily. I write off 100% of the loan value of my 4+ month lates when I compute XIRR. But I’ve got two 3 month late loans lurking around the corner with a current loan value of $92.37 about to hit the 4…

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Continue reading → March 2008 ROI 8.16%

(part 6 of my Prosper Lending Presentation)

#3 - Don’t Gamble with your Bids

Have you ever found yourself unsure about a listing but hopelessly drawn to that high and juicy interest rate? If you’re unsure about a borrowers ability to pay you back, chances are they probably can’t.

All it takes is one bad loan on a relatively small number of loans to really kill your ROI. J9359 recently had a

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Continue reading → Quick Chimp Tip for the New Lender – 3

(part 6 of my Prosper Lending Presentation)

#3 - Don’t Gamble with your Bids

Have you ever found yourself unsure about a listing but hopelessly drawn to that high and juicy interest rate? If you’re unsure about a borrowers ability to pay you back, chances are they probably can’t.

All it takes is one bad loan on a relatively small number of loans to really kill your ROI. J9359 recently had a

• Plate Number Coils United States Stamps

• Juicy Couture Women Discount Fragrances Store

Continue reading → Quick Chimp Tip for the New Lender – 3

I was wondering what the effect of one more or one less bad loan would be on my current ROI. The magnitude of the change was somewhat surprising. Tonight my account balance is $4,453.67 and the total loan value of my 4 loans that are 4+ months late i…

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Continue reading → What if

Inspired by this blog post over at Prosper I now love Prosper too! It seems I just needed to learn a new way to calculate my returns. From the comments section:”I take the amount I initially deposited across all accounts, subtract that from the curre…

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Continue reading → I love Prosper too!

Loan Chimp has a post over on his blog listing his XIRR rate of 7.5%. Why is this below both the LendingStats and Eric’s estimate ? Because LC writes off any loan that is 1 month late or worse. Now I don’t think that is wrong, but it is probably und…

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Continue reading → fun with XIRR

(part 3 of my Prosper Lending Presentation)

Average Interest Rate: 12.3%
Average Risk: B grade

Average Loan Age: 388 days

9.7% ROI on Lendingstats
7.9% ROI on Eric’s CC
~ 7.5 % ROI using Excel XIRR

Briefly, here are more stats on my Prosper Lending Portfolio (again, these are more recent figures than what was shown at Prosper Days 08).

OK, so my ROI isn’t exactly “high”, but it’s not bad

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Continue reading → Inside LC’s Prosper Portfolio

An update on my post about impact of idle cash on returns.Anonymous left a comment that I’d like to comment on :)I did account for cash tied up in winning bids in computing my average cash balance for each month but I didn’t include the cost of lost in…

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Continue reading → update on effect of idle cash

I’ve noticed a lot of borrowing to reinvest in Prosper listing recently. Maybe I’m just paying more attention but it seems like they have increased. I’ve been asking the same question on each listing that I see:”What is the spread you are expecting b…

Continue reading → Borrowing to reinvest in Prosper I don’t get it

There is a posting over on the Prosper forums by NCBroker with the title: “I’m pulling out of Prosper” and the reason given is lost income due to idle funds not risk due to defaults. Well this got me thinking (right after I thought NCBroker is an idio…

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Continue reading → Impact of idle cash is minimal

February 08 Warm n Fuzzy Index:
54% - 38/70
(Last months reading: 46%)

A little late, and a little sparse in detail, which can be found in my PD08 Reviews.

7/10 - Personal Performance: Remains unchanged. 7.5% ROI using Excel’s XIRR function counting all 1+ month late loans as $0

6/10 - Peer Performance: Up to 6 this month, based on PD08 Review Part 7

6/10 - Prosper Management: Feeling better

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Continue reading → February 08 Warm n Fuzzy Index

On Viability

Another thing that came out at Prosper Days 2008 was some more insight on the pace of growth on Prosper and the burn rate of it’s Venture Capital.

The viability of Prosper should be a huge concern for Prosper lenders. If Prosper goes out of business one day, someone needs to service our loans – that is, receive payments, distribute them to the multiple lenders on each loan, collect

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Continue reading → Prosper Days 2008 Recap - Part 7

On the home page Prosper is advertising lenders can earn between 9.49% - 12.81%Here is the search using their criteria of July 1,2006 to Oct 30,2007 observed on Nov 30, 2007 with 0 inquires, 0-1 current DQ’s and only auto-fund. I find it annoying that…

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Continue reading → Prosper still using misleading lender returns

I use this search criteria (here is a screen shot)And I get the following estimated ROI table:But when I look at the Performance data I see this:So I’m looking at the column for AA and I see 165 loans of which 129 are active billed and less than 1 mont…

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Continue reading → Prospers ROI calculation wrong

High ROI Lender Panel

In late November 2007 I was invited to participate in Prosper Days 2008’s High ROI Lender Panel moderated by Eric at ericscc.com . I gladly accepted the offer not only because I wanted to be one of the few cool people on a panel, but also because I have never given a presentation to an audience of that size before. What a neat opportunity!

Of course, at the time I was

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Continue reading → Prosper Days 2008 Recap - Part 6

I keep expecting to see my ROI hit bottom and turn around. As of the end of February my XIRR() calculated return is down to 7.10%, down from 7.78% at the end of January.Every way I slice the data it comes back to the first four months of lending. I o…

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Continue reading → First four months are dragging me down

XIRR for February still trending down at 7.10% vs 7.78% at the end of January. LendingStats has ROI at 7.45% and Eric’s has ROI of 9.63%Here is a snapshot of my lending overview screen:The loan I have in the new agency test is now showing as defaulted…

Continue reading → February 2008 ROI 7.10%

I just happened to notice (again) the text under the “become a lender” button on the Prosper home page today. “Earn 9.49 - 12.81% returns” with a footnote:”[1] Rates of return shown are the average annual return on Prosper loans originated between 6…

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Continue reading → Earn 9.49 - 12.81% returns

Lendingstats ROI vs. Eric’s Credit Community ROI

Just the other day my average loan age according to LendingStats (LS) and Eric’s finally reached the 1 year mark. I thought it would be a great time to compare ROI calculations for each of the sites to eliminate any effects from annualizing calculations. I missed my 1 year mark on Eric’s by a couple of days, but close enough…)

If you’re

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Continue reading → Battle of the Titans

January 08 Warm n Fuzzy Index:
46% - 32/70
(Last months reading: 43%)

7/10 - Personal Performance: Remains unchanged. 7.76% ROI using Excel’s XIRR function counting all 1+ month late loans as $0, including one <15 day late loan marked with a bankruptcy tag.

5/10 - Peer Performance: Remains unchanged, but rates have been increasing due to the bidding guidance. It’s a start, maybe…

4/10 -

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Continue reading → January 08 Warm n Fuzzy Index

This is a screen capture of my Prosper account as of this morning. And here are last months results. Number of loans that are late or worse did not go up, but I now have 3 that are less than 15 days late. One loan paid off so my total loan count is …

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Continue reading → January 2008 ROI 7.78%

At the moment, there is no way for a Prosper lender to track the performance of the Portfolio Plans (PP) unless the lender is actually using them. One could use the performance page with criteria from the PP credit segments, but there is no way to filter out by interest rate - the results would include loans where the PP’s were bid off.

Fortunately for us, a relatively new lender stated on the

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Continue reading → Tracking Prosper’s Portfolio Plan Performance