There has been quite the discussion brewing over on the Lend Academy Forum about a recent change from Lending Club. I think it’s important to point out this recent change as they affect some of the third party tools that I feature on the blog. In a nutshell, the change is that instead of tools being able to constantly get up-to-date data from the CSV file right at release time, it is now only updated once every minute. For those that don’t know what a CSV file is, it is simply a text file which includes organized data - in this case all of the available loans. You can read other forum member’s thoughts here. What does this mean for third party tools? In the case of P2P-Picks - a lot.
LendingRobot now registered as Investment Advisor with the SEC
As social lending continues to mature, it comes to no surprise that the third party automation tools continue to mature with it. I’m excited to share that LendingRobot is now registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as an Investment Advisor. If you are a Lending Robot user you already received an email earlier this week. Besides this being a step in the right direction for third party tools, this change also comes with a new fee structure which I’ll outline below. I’m hoping this change will also prompt retail investors who were previously reluctant about using a third party tool to reconsider. [Read more...]
I went on vacation last week, but my Lending Club account didn’t (How I invested $1,000 in less than 1 week)
It wasn’t until last week until I truly appreciated the fact that my account was fully automated. I used to think automation wasn’t necessary. After all, I’m a software developer by trade and usually have my laptop within reach during the 4 pm or 8 pm CST note release times. However, last week I went on a road trip to South Carolina and camped along the way down south - not conducive to managing a p2p lending account that isn’t automated. I tried to coordinate a significant amount of capital (it’s all about perspective people) being invested while I was gone and see how long it would take to invest. [Read more...]
Nickel Steamroller 2.0 Released!
Back in December, we featured our Q & A with Nickel Steamroller in anticipation for the new version of their site. If you haven’t already heard, Nickel Steamroller released version 2.0 a couple of weeks ago which includes a great amount of analytics for p2p lending that regular Nickel Steamroller users have been accustomed too. One big change you will notice is the addition of Prosper analytics. [Read more...]
P2P Lending Diversification and Portfolios
There are many strategies in investing in P2P Lending, several of which were outlined in our last series of posts by New Jersey Guy and his experience with FOLIOfn. You should note that those 3 strategies were just a taste of the secondary market and there are some very dedicated people out there who are trying out all sorts of strategies. Just hop on over to the Lend Academy Forum and I’m sure others could teach you a thing or two. I’ve heard New Jersey Guy mention diversification within peer to peer lending investments several times and it is something I now realize I knew nothing about. [Read more...]
Peer to Peer Lending Automation - The Key to Investing in Lending Club
If only it were this easy…
Over the last couple of months, we have featured 3 tools for automating your investments in Lending Club. Before the question and answer sessions we posted, my process for my investing was completely manual. Brian was investing manually as well and he actually setup a third party mobile app to send him notifications just before Lending Club releases notes. Even with my relatively small account, I was missing feeding times and had available cash just sitting in my account pretty often. Automation tools are starting to mature and I decided that it was finally time for me to try them out and hopefully help others who were considering automation. [Read more...]
Q & A with BlueVestment - FREE Automated Investing Tool for LendingClub
BlueVestment is a third party tool for automation with LendingClub. Recently, they have made their product completely free for investors. Not only does the tool allow you to select your own custom filters, but it also ties into P2P-Picks for loan picking - a feature that I’m currently using. (If you haven’t heard of Bryce Mason from P2P-Picks, you may also be interested in the podcast he did with LendAcademy here)
Nathan from BlueVestment was nice enough to participate in our third part in a series of posts about third party tools. If you have any questions for Nathan, please feel free to post in the comments.
LendingRobot Exits Beta - Officially Launches and Open to the Public!
Just last week we featured a Q & A with LendingRobot. At the time, they were still in beta, but that all changed as of this morning. They have officially launched and are open to the public. You can read more about it in their press release here. If anyone has experience in the beta or has signed up now, we would definitely be interested to hear your thoughts in the comments. Our goal is to provide a review in the future.
Q & A with Nickel Steamroller - A Look Into What’s to Come
This is our second post in a series of posts of third party tools for peer to peer lending. Our first post featured automated investing with LendingRobot. In this session, we will be featuring a Q & A with Michael from Nickel Steamroller, which is a great source of information for everything LendingClub and Prosper. [Read more...]
Q & A with LendingRobot - Third Party Automated Investing Tool for Lending Club
This isn’t the first time that we have talked about third party tools for automated investing on Peer & Social Lending. Today marks the first of a series of posts we plan to do on all of the popular third party tools that exist for Lending Club and Prosper. We are starting off this series with a Q & A of LendingRobot created by Gilad Golan and Emmanuel Marot. As you read through this post be thinking of other questions you may have as Emmanuel has agreed to field any additional questions in the comments section. [Read more...]