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Statistics |
| Unique Visitors: 5 |
| Total Unique Visitors: 245653 |
| Visitors Out: 2061 |
| Total Visitors Out: 2061 |
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| I Surrender |
| 2008-06-09 14:14:00 |
I started a new job a while back. A very good move for me and my family, but horrible for my free time and my free brainpower. I tried to deny it, but the reality is that I've got nothing left. I could pretend otherwise, but that's self-delusion. I still believe in Prosper and will keep lending, but Prosperous Land is going DOA for a while.
If things settle down, I may return.
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| Where Will That Rebate Check Go |
| 2008-05-24 10:24:00 |
With the IRS blasting an estimated $105 billion dollars toward the public, the great question is where that check will go. I'm skeptical that it'll provide the economic stimulus that folks in government were expecting - I've always assumed that folks will use it to pay off credit card bills or buy their next tank of gas, neither of which stimulates the US economy. But paying off bills will get
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| Prosper.com April Marketplace Survey |
| 2008-05-22 13:47:00 |
Prosper's April Marketplace survey was an interesting read. Mostly for the disclaimers at the bottom. Prosper's definition of "Attractive Risk-Return Tradeoff" was insightful.
Attractive Risk-Return Tradeoff: For purposes of this survey release, listings are considered to have attractive returns if, based on historical loan repayment performance of Prosper
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| Prosper.com Feature Upgrade |
| 2008-05-20 13:27:00 |
Prosper did a feature drop the night of the 18th, and Andrew posted about it on the Prosper blog. This was an infrastructure drop, with improvements to the backend, but nothing visible right now:
Improved institutional lender supportImproved credit report reporting (for borrowers)Preparation for bankruptcy trackingImproved data handling for loan originationThe most interesting item for lenders is
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| Prosper Newsletter: Portfolio ROI Falls |
| 2008-05-19 12:49:00 |
Prosper sent out a monthly newsletter that hit my email box today. The most astounding thing has been the rather notable fall in the portfolio ROI.
I had a hard time believing that the conservative portfolio estimated return had dropped to 5.10%. I remember the heady days of 8% anticipated returns with the Conservative portfolio. With Bankrate showing some 3-year CDs offering 4.45%, what exactly
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| April Prosper.com Collections Update |
| 2008-05-16 15:15:00 |
Yes, I'm alive. I took a week off for my brother's graduation. Unfortunately, no internet where we were staying. D'oh. I'm digging back in. On to the substance:
This is part of my ongoing series monitoring collections efficiency (March's report for comparison). For a reminder on the methodology, I took a snapshot of all of Prosper's loans on April 1 and compared their current status against
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| Default Sale Delayed |
| 2008-05-05 12:15:00 |
I like that Prosper is putting up more posts from their folks on their blog. Today's post was an update on the default sale by Doug Fuller. The punchline - the bad-loan marketplace is buyer market and a seller's nightmare:
As a result of these efforts, Prosper received a record number of bids on the sale file (eight). Unfortunately, all of the bids were extremely low. As I mentioned in my last
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| More On State Sales Tax Collections |
| 2008-05-02 09:53:00 |
State sales tax collections are a strong indicator of whether a state is going into a recession or not. This is useful information for lenders since loan default rates are known to correlate with recessions. After my last post on this, Calculated Risk has dug up a useful graphic from a Rockefeller Institute report that gives a heat map for year over year sales tax collections changes.
Green is
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| Quiet Period |
| 2008-04-29 12:14:00 |
I know it's been real quiet around here. I've had to take a few weeks to work through some non-Prosper things and it's seriously cut into my blogging time. I should return to a more normal blogging schedule next week.
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| Many States Looking At Recession |
| 2008-04-25 11:37:00 |
I had picked on a few states before, but, according to Yahoo, it looks like a majority of the states are now facing budget shortfalls, a likely indicator for a recession and higher default rates than projected by current Prosper statistics
By mid-April, 16 states and Puerto Rico were reporting shortfalls in their current budgets as the revenue those budgets were built on -- typically, taxes --
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| High ROI Lender Panel Video Surfaces |
| 2008-04-25 09:27:00 |
The video for the infamous high ROI lender panel has surfaced on Google Video. LoanChimp and HollowOak have observed that spans of time appear to be missing from the video.
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| Prosper Days 2008 Videos Up On Google |
| 2008-04-18 10:21:00 |
Prosper has released video footage from Prosper days to Google Video. I havn't had a chance to go through it all yet, so that'll be coming, but why should that stop you? Based on all the reports out of Prosper Days, I suggest that lenders should scroll down to collections practices, start there, and then go back and experience it all.
Monday
Prosper 101 (ran in parallel with registration)
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| Prosper Changes Bidding Guidance & Portfolios Too |
| 2008-04-16 16:08:00 |
In addition to the large changes announced yesterday, Prosper swept a few changes in more quietly. Specifically, they tweaked with their portfolio slices and drastically increased the number of bins used for lender bidding guidance.
First, the portfolios. The conservative and balanced portfolios had the loan criteria tweaked. A quick comparison shows that the conservative portfolio had the
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| New And Shiny Prosper Interest Rates |
| 2008-04-15 13:37:00 |
Prosper dropped a large bomb this morning with their latest site upgrade. The headline topic: 36% Rates">interest rates everywhere [1]. Besides being miffed that they couldn't have announced it one day earlier and saved me some time, I find this to be a phenomenal development. Prosper has been limited in their growth due to the state usury limits, and this should increase the borrower volume, especially
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| Time For Prosper To Drop The Bank Draft Fee? |
| 2008-04-14 15:00:00 |
Update: Darn it Prosper. Obsoleting my post less than 24 hours after I finished writing it. I'll keep it around for posterity.
A while back, I noted that almost all portfolio-worthy loans are funding and this is driving Prosper's loan creation engine. A survey through a few portfolio criteria confirms this to still be true. For Prosper to extend and increase their loan volume, it's critical to
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| Digging Through The Prosper.com Help Wanted Section |
| 2008-04-12 14:25:00 |
Prosper does list jobs on their website, but it's PR washed and very blah. The recruiters seem to have more fun when they post Craigslist listings, and they leave some interesting crumbs in their wake.
For example, Prosper's looking for a new Product Manager because marketing is taking over the website look and feel (which begs the question - who has it now?):
The content of every single
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| Interesting Way To Get Prosper Money Back |
| 2008-04-11 10:31:00 |
This Prosper lender had found a creative way to liquidate all the loans he's holding: take out a loan against them.
Purpose of loan:
This loan will be used to pay off my current Prosper Lending Account. I no longer have the time to manage this, and would like to use my lending funds towards something else at this time.
Cash balance: $26.78
Value of loans: + $14,959.08
Payments in transit:
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| Prosper's March Marketplace Summary |
| 2008-04-10 13:40:00 |
Two days ago, Prosper released their March Marketplace Summary (also on Business Wire). As always, the most interesting part is Chris Larsen's marketplace commentary:
As we have previously reported, Prosper’s mix of “well priced” loans – loans with an attractive risk-return tradeoff – has dramatically changed from the same period last year with approximately a
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| Lending Club Halts New Lenders. Prosper Next? |
| 2008-04-09 14:35:00 |
Lending Club has announced that they're not allowing lenders to invest in loans until they get a few things sorted out with the government (I'm assuming the SEC):
Lending Club has started a process to register, with the appropriate securities authorities, promissory notes that may be offered and sold to lenders through our site in the future. Until we complete the registration process,
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| Prosper Listing Word Analysis |
| 2008-04-09 13:36:00 |
Word analysis has gone in and out of vogue among Prosper lenders. Right now, it's in vogue here at Prosperous Land. The premise is that you can get hints about the quality of a listing based on words that appear in the listing description. I've been messing with it to try and get a statistically significant edge (proving it provides an edge, now there's a dicey proposition), but some interesting
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| March Prosper.com Collections Update |
| 2008-04-08 11:27:00 |
This is part of my ongoing series monitoring collections efficiency (February's report for comparison). For a reminder on the methodology, I took a snapshot of all of Prosper's loans on March 3 (yes, I'm a doofus and missed March 1) and compared their current status against those same loans on April 1. Presumably, loans that don't get further behind have some kind of money extracted in the
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| Figuring Prosper's Maximum Allowable Loan Rate |
| 2008-04-07 09:15:00 |
I often get confused when I look at a state like New Jersey that has a 16% interest rate cap due to state laws but then see listings where the maximum interest rate is 12.84%. This makes no sense in any practical universe, so what's going on? The answer, my friends, is a confluence of Prosper's payment choices and government regulation (see, it doesn't have to make sense).
The Bank Draft
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| What A Coincidence |
| 2008-04-06 15:36:00 |
I happened to be playing with Prosperous Land visitor statistics and I happened to notice that about 10% of my web traffic in March came from San Francisco. What are the odds?
While I'm mentioning the site, I'll working up the mental fortitude to tinker with the site layout. It's a confluence of Google adding some cool (beta) widgets to the Blogger system and my desire to get away from one of
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| LoanChimp's Prosper.com Lending Tips |
| 2008-04-04 10:23:00 |
LoanChimp has provided a handy set of Prosper lender tips (in 8 parts, thus far) that are good advice to any new (and existing) Prosper lender. However, going through all the posts is quite tedious, so here's my quick crib sheet:
You don't know everything. Just admit it. It'll make things easier.
You're here to make money, not provide handouts.
This isn't gambling. Don't take chances.Don't be
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| Alt-A And Sub-prime Interactive Map |
| 2008-04-03 12:46:00 |
The New York Federal Reserve Bank has put together a pretty entertaining interactive map showing how bad things are in the alt-A and sub-prime mortgage space (hat tip The Big Picture).
That's the wonderful state of Texas up there. The NY Fed also published, in spreadsheet form, their supporting data. If you don't want to spend lots of time navigating the map to figure it out, California and
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| Quick Update On Prosper State Lending Limits |
| 2008-04-03 09:41:00 |
Every once in a while, I state a snapshot of Prosper's state lending limits to see how things are changing over time. Some states tie their lending limits to the Fed Funds rate or some other standard benchmark, state laws may change, or Prosper's legal standing in a state may change. Prosper, being the wily data hiders that they are, have blocked Google and the Way Back Machine from caching the
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| February Prosper Collections Report |
| 2008-04-02 12:39:00 |
This is part of my ongoing series monitoring collections efficiency (January's report for comparison). For a reminder on the methodology, I took a snapshot of all of Prosper's loans on February 1 and compared their current status against those same loans on March 3 (yes, I'm a doofus and missed March 1). Presumably, loans that don't get further behind have some kind of money extracted in the
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| Prosper Interfering With Presidential Politics |
| 2008-04-01 08:58:00 |
After extensive investigation, Prosperous Land can now report that Prosper is attempting to manipulate the 2008 election process. Based in liberal San Francisco and quietly supported by Nancy Pelosi herself, Prosper has employees with well known ties to the Democratic establishment, especially among the executives. Prosper is intentionally holding back on raising the lending limits and improving
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| Prosper At Finovate 2008 |
| 2008-03-31 13:28:00 |
It looks like Prosper will once again be at Finnovate this year, amongst 40 young and upcoming financial startups:
Already 40 leading startups have committed to demoing their products (no PowerPoint allowed) including: Andera, Aradiom, Authentium, Boulevard R., Buxfer, Cake Financial, CAPS, ClairMail, Credit Karma, Diversinet, Expensr, First ROI, FindABetterBank, Guard ID, Guardian Analytics, IP
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| Prosper Big In The UK? Who Knew? |
| 2008-03-31 09:26:00 |
I found this little oops in the Warsaw Business Journal (English translation):
"In Poland, the difference between interest rates for loans and those on bank deposits is so large that [this situation] presents a great opportunity for social lending services like Monetto.pl," said Łukasz Banach, the president of Prender, the firm which operates Monetto.pl. ...
Social lending has already become
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| FDIC Thinks Bank Failures Coming |
| 2008-03-27 10:25:00 |
Yeah, it's a double-post day. I just spotted this on Calculated Risk. The AP is reporting that the FDIC is staffing up for an anticipated rush of bank failures.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. wants to add 140 workers to bring staff levels to 360 workers in the division that handles bank failures, John Bovenzi, the agency's chief operating officer, said Tuesday. ...
There are 76 banks on the
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| What A Difference A Month Makes |
| 2008-03-27 09:14:00 |
February was not Prosper's best month, with hitting a low for loan dollars originated. This shortfall was easily anticipated by the lower number of active listings (~1700) Prosper had during mid February. A fair amount of favorable press and Prosper Days appears to have jump started their originations. Prosper has about 2500 active listings as of this moment (9:01 am CST - your mileage may vary)
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| Prosper Pitching To Hedge Funds |
| 2008-03-24 21:31:00 |
I almost overlooked this little nugget. Prosper has taken to pitching it's lending platform as the perfect solution for hedge funds to get into the consumer credit market.
“Prosper is America’s largest peer-to-peer marketplace with over 600,000 members,” stated Kirk Inglis, CFO of Prosper. “As credit markets experience unprecedented changes, institutional lenders, including hedge funds, are
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| Office Linkfest |
| 2008-03-21 13:35:00 |
Hello, Mike. What's happening? Uh… we have sort of a problem here. Yeah. You apparently didn't put one of the new coversheets on your Prosper linkfest reports. Mmmm. Yeah. You see, we're putting the coversheets on all the Prosper linkfest reports now before they go out. Did you see the memo about this? Yeah. If you could just go ahead and make sure you do that from now on, that will be great. And
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| What Should My Target Prosper ROI Be? |
| 2008-03-18 22:05:00 |
With the Fed dropping interest rates like they're going out of style, it's an appropriate time to discuss what average annual return to expect from Prosper. The easiest way to look at it is to say "I'd like to get 10%". Unfortunately for us individuals, this is not how the finance world operates, and, in an bidding system like Prosper, this matters.
We're competing for borrowers who have
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| Does Idle Cash Matter? |
| 2008-03-17 12:56:00 |
There has been constant griping about idle cash not earning interest on Prosper. I had always assumed that the effect was small and that Prosper had better things to be doing with their time. Like fixing collections. I had never bothered to calculate it out. j9359 did and jproved that it doesn't matter too much:
For my account the difference is minimal, one or two basis points once past the
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| Friday Fun: Gordon Bailey Quotes |
| 2008-03-14 13:01:00 |
Prosper CEO Chris Larson has been pushing the idea that Prosper combines aspects of George Bailey and Gordon Gekko to do something in the financial marketplace. What insightful quotes might we expect to hear uttered around this Mr. Gordon Bailey?
Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a Prosper loan funds an angel gets his wings.A toast! A toast! A toast to Mama Dollar and to Papa Dollar, and if
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| Final Prosper Days Roundup |
| 2008-03-13 13:34:00 |
In the final roundup of Prosper Days commentary (previous ones), LoanChimp did a 7 part recap of his Prosper Days experience. LC was notable for being the most experienced lender on the high-ROI panel, and spread his chimpy-wisdom to all who would listen. Go bananas.
Prosper Days Recap - Part 1Prosper Days Recap - Part 2Prosper Days Recap - Part 3Prosper Days Recap - Part 4Prosper Days Recap -
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| Post-Prosper Days Interview In WSJ |
| 2008-03-12 09:28:00 |
This is the first post-Prosper Days interview I've seen with Chris Larson (which is not to say that there havn't been others, just that I havn't seen them). He's picking up several themes that were rolled out at Prosper days and taking them around. This includes benevolent greed:
The Wall Street Journal: How would you describe your business?
Chris Larsen: An eBay for money and credit. Borrowers
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| Prosper's February Lending Market Survey |
| 2008-03-11 09:50:00 |
Prosper has released their February lending market survey, and, once again, my great enjoyment is perusing Chris Larson's take on the marketplace:
In February 2008, the percentage of prime loans funded on Prosper once again hit record levels, accounting for 43% of originations. At the same time, the percentage of prime listings on Prosper hit an all time high of just
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