Archives for August 2014

Lending Club Filed to go Public - My Thoughts on Their IPO

August 29, 2014 by Ryan Lichtenwald 4 Comments

By now you’ve probably heard that Lending Club has filed to go public. Lending Club will now be in a “quiet period” until after the IPO actually occurs. If you’re interested in digging in yourself, you can view the SEC related documents here:

http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001409970&owner=include&count=40

There has been some talk regarding whether the IPO will be available for retail investors. For an industry that started with mostly retail investors, I hope Lending Club does their best to make this possible. After all, we are talking about something that once represented true “Peer to Peer Lending” I’m hopeful and signed up to be notified of new IPOs through Loyal3. If you haven’t heard of Loyal3, it is an easy way for retail investors to purchase stocks of well known U.S. companies. Most recently, they have allowed retail investors access to the GoPro IPO.

This is solely just speculation on my part, but if you want to get notified of upcoming IPOs offered through Loyal3 - you can do so through my below (affiliate) link:

Loyal 3 - Get notified of new IPOs

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Betting Big on P2P Lending - Another Reader’s Returns

August 20, 2014 by Ryan Lichtenwald 2 Comments

By now you’ve probably seen my returns in peer to peer lending as well as some of the other bloggers in this space (Peter, Simon). Today, I’m happy to feature Carl who I got to meet at LendIt this year. He has over 300k invested in Lending Club and his returns have been hovering above 11% using XIRR for 2014. (If you’re interested in calculating your returns this way - check out this video) Carl also began to sell his notes on FOLIOfn and it will be interesting to do a follow up early next year to see how his returns were affected. It’s always nice to get a different perspective on things and certainly Carl isn’t the average p2p lending investor. In fact, he doesn’t employ any automation to pick his notes. Every note is hand picked. Take it away Carl! [Read more…]

Learn how to calculate your p2p lending returns with XIRR (for free)

August 6, 2014 by Ryan Lichtenwald 4 Comments

In this video I outline how to calculate your returns using XIRR, which is one of the more popular ways of calculating p2p lending returns. I also outline some of the downsides to Lending Club’s adjusted net annualized return. This all can be done for free with Google sheets, but it also works with Microsoft Excel. Additionally, Simon from Lending Memo recently released a handy XIRR calculator here (note: no data is collected or saved in his tool). If you have any thoughts on calculating returns or if I have overlooked something, please let me know in the comments!

You can also subscribe to the Peer & Social Lending YouTube Channel. I will be continuing to post more useful tutorials for p2p lending investors.

Prosper Marketplace Investing Review - 2 months in

August 1, 2014 by Ryan Lichtenwald 7 Comments

I am about two months into diversifying my p2p lending investment by investing in Prosper. My total account value is now just shy of $4000 as I continue to invest all available cash into Prosper. The process has been extremely painless and I was pleasantly surprised to see Prosper’s instant transfer feature. Unlike Lending Club, once Prosper has verified your bank account, you no longer have to wait the painful 4-5 business days for your money to clear. Suddenly, you are able to deploy cash instantly on the Prosper platform. This has been my one complaint regarding Lending Club. This isn’t a huge problem for lump sum investors, but as someone who adds only funds when I get paid, the wait is frustrating. See this article from Orchard regarding cash drag. It focuses on cash drag while loans are funding or in the review process, but the idea is the same. Instant transfer makes for a much more efficient investing process. Couple this with Prosper’s consistent increase in loans available on the platform, it makes an investment with Prosper very attractive (in my opinion).

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