[mikedev10]

so, newb here, wondering about loan/note availability;  is it just a slow time of year or is it normal to see few notes available?

per https://www.peercube.com/histperf/available_loans/lc it appears that loan availability has declined both over the past 12 months as well as year over year.

it looked like the average december day last year had 1200 loans available to invest in.  i wrote my bot expecting that it would be able to assess 1200 a day and pick what it liked.  in reality each listing period appears to eek out only 5-10 loans, with "pick your own loan via the LC api or website" being more of a marketing gimmick.

it looks like big institutional investors...  can access some loans, some how, at most any time?  do some of the tools out there (nsr invest) get to do this too?  then after that, it looks like "allocation 1" happens with most loans being filled by lendingclub auto-invest, then "allocation 2" with a smidge of a few loans gets put out onto the site and api.

does this mean the only way for a little guy like myself to actually get access to and evaluate many loans is through foliofn? 

overall, how are you guys liking foliofn?  any concerns?  i saw this video but don't know if there was a follow up and the number of loans seemed to small to draw a conclusion.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhavJHlwbB0

since you are all here i assume you have found the platform to be advantageous, although, i am surprised there seems to be so little talk/videos/etc about it anywhere.  should i consider this a good thing/hidden gem, or a bad thing, that this market is a lot rougher than one would expect and rougher to make money in that simple auto-invest?

is there any actual bidding taking place?  it appears there is no bid/ask market here, but simply a loan listed for sale which people choose to buy or not.

can i trust lendingclub's calculations to calculate ROI on my purchased notes correctly?  if not, is there a spreadsheet or something simple already out there to help me better understand how my account is doing?

[storm]

I hate to sound like a Debbie Downer, but the retail marketplace is on the decline.  We make up 7% of LC's business now and falling.

This forum used to be much more active, but LC got greedy and sold investors a bunch of bad loans in the last few years.  Many of us old timers have or are in the process of winding down our portfolios because of the lackluster returns and unfavorable tax treatment.  My returns have been looking a little better the last few months despite no new investments, but only time will tell if LC can be trusted again.

FolioFN is strictly a take it or leave it marketplace.  No bidding.

For calculating returns, the XIRR function in spreadsheet software (Excel, Google Sheets, etc.) is probably the best method.  Peter has a blog entry about it here:  https://www.lendacademy.com/different-ways-to-calculate-p2p-lending-returns/

[TravelingPennies]

thanks for the thoughts, i'll check out the article.

it is seeming like i should really be transferring some cash from my roth ira into a new lendingclub account to get a favorable tax situation.