Portfolio plans

[uioped1]

Has anyone created a portfolio plan with tiers directly created from the prosper expected ROI tiers?  http://www.prosper.com/help/topics/lender-pricing_bids.aspx

My initial experiment with portfolio plans failed, because the loans they bid on tended to have lower expected returns than the plan suggested, thus the bid amounts were too low.  (I have not been a lender long enough to see if the actual return trends towards the expected return of the plan or of the individual loans.  Anyway, I do not have a large enough portfolio for that trend to be representative.)

The only way I can see to make the portfolio plans have appropriate bids is to use the tiers used by prosper as a starting point for the portfolio plans, and then go more or less agressive from there.  That just seems like too much work to set up though...  For now I'm doing manual bids.

[go4reward]

I do not have any portfolio plan setup because I want to see the loan before bidding. Like uioped1 stated, does anybody have any success in portfolio plan auto-bidding? I am curious to know too.

[verifiedtrading]

I think it is best to seek advice from a business advisor. You can also try the Small Business Administration  or SCORE.org .

[Jason]

My portfoilo plan was based on the published default information on the Prosper site. I opted not to auto bid on those loans so I still review them before I lend. It helps me sift through listings with matching criteria. You can do this when you bid loans, but it is a tme consuming process to do over and over. You can always create a new plan or modify an existing one.

[avaloncourt]

Hello all,

I just joined the group and thought I'd get involved here. I started out letting Prosper make the decisions under a moderate portfolio plan but I quickly put a stop to that after its first two selections. Proper is making its decisions 'by the numbers' but I would never have knowingly funded either of those loans had it not been automatic.

The first was someone financing a $10,000 engagement ring. That's a Judge Judy case just waiting to be taped. The second was a consolidation to pay off credit cards. I have a personal issue with loaning to pay off credit cards. Too frequently people "consolidate" and then run the credit cards right back up again since they're still in their possession. That situation makes me very uneasy.

Now I judge the viability of the loan based on the facts/numbers available and take the 'story' with a grain of salt.

[ResearchPro]

Hello avaloncourt, and welcome!
Even I do invest mostly "by the numbers", I agree with you that the plans are designed... well, not perfectly. Even by the numbers they could ignore important factors, not saying that they will approve any fraudlent listing with ok numbers.

[avaloncourt]

Hello avaloncourt, and welcome!
Even I do invest mostly "by the numbers", I agree with you that the plans are designed... well, not perfectly. Even by the numbers they could ignore important factors, not saying that they will approve any fraudlent listing with ok numbers.

Thanks for the welcome. I'm curious about something. You just posted your picks (Sept 7) and I would never put anything into #6. They haven't posted anything at all in the essay portions and the person's ID is loot-mover. That alone would concern me that my loot would be moving away never to be seen again Are the bids we're seeing there just automated bids from the portfolio plans? I never understood the listings with no written information at all.

[replimaster]

Avaloncourt;
 I believe you are corrct in that assumption. My take: as soon as a loan is posted, Pthat loan is scanned by all the portfolios for placing a bid. These lenders would never see the lack of verbiage.

My personal example: I placed a loan request a couple montha ago ( Borrow 1000 to reinvest in Prosper. I know, I know... it can't work. Well, we shall see. Just a little experiment to answer some questions and see things from the other side of the fence). Anyway, within 45 seconds of hitting the key placing the loan request, I was fully funded (even to the point where bids were thrown out due to bidders coming in at a lower rate!) I have a hard time believing that a couple dozen lenders were sitting there at their computer just waiting for my loan to pop up, read and analyze it, and enter bids, all within 45 seconds. The ONLY logical explanation is portfolio bidding. I may do another experiment where I request a comperable amount, and the only wording I place is "This is a rip-off loan. I will take this money and not pay back a cent."  Not really, but it would be interesting to see if it, too, got funded within a minute.

My 2 cents (less Prospers cut).

Dave

[sosocratic]

My personal example: I placed a loan request a couple montha ago ( Borrow 1000 to reinvest in Prosper. I know, I know... it can't work. Well, we shall see.

For the record - it is possible to work. It is just that by the time you get done paying the fees and 1% of rewards to prosper and the interest on your loan to the lenders you will need to be making a 15% and probably more like 20% ROI in the reinvested money to make it work. The average prosper ROI is 4-6% and very few people make 15-20% over the long haul. Some do but not many. So if you have some reason to think you will be significantly above average then you might want to try it.

Now the better answer is whether I am going to bid on those loans. I personally think that the vast majority of people trying this are going to tank and lose money on the enterprise. I then worry that in the face of others not paying them back whether they are going to make a priority of paying me back. One would hope that they value their credit rating enough to do so even if they are feeling fed up with the whole thing. This is (the second paragraph, not the first) is all just speculation on my part and my gut feeling and I have no stats. Basically I think most (but not all) of the people doing this are fools destined to be seperated from their money and I would rather not be in business with them.

Of course, if one was a lender with 2 year old loans and a 20% ROI then I would probably feel pretty good about it.

[ResearchPro]

You just posted your picks (Sept 7) and I would never put anything into #6.

That's strange. I see myself there among the bidders.

[go4reward]

Is it possible that you can still setup the Portfolio plans without auto-bidding?

[Jason]

Yes. I use my portfolio plan daily and unchecked auto-bidding. It is a great tool to pre-screen listings and can be adjusted.

[go4reward]

Thanks, I will give it a try.