That’s one of the things I don’t like about the trading platform; I can’t ask borrowers questions.
True, but can’t you look at the original loan to see what questions were asked back then? Not quite the same (what if nobody asked what YOU want to know), but better than nothing.
Even original lenders can’t ask borrowers questions once the loan’s been disbursed, either, like “Dude? Why is your credit score TANKING???”.
Monthly Journal Note (6/1/2011)
Join date: 10/15/2010
Investment to date: $750
Payments to date: $208.70
Interest to date: $36.66
Notes currently held: 30
Current Net Annualized Return: 11.67%
Payments since last period: $39.89
Interest paid since last period: $7.19
Actualized return for month: 11.50%
Okay. Good. I’m convinced. I think it’s time to invest a few more schkelim. 
How do you get that report?
I think (s)he made it on her own. Most of it is available from the Accounts page, and even more when you click “details”. I’m running my numbers right now and they’re showing some strong stuff. I might put some more into it after all.
Ah, ok. I know how to find the information but thought it would be great if that neat summary could be automatically emailed to me monthly or something.
Does your “investment” figure include reinvesting proceeds in new loans or just what you actually sent to LC?
So far, my investment is 1375 but a significant portion of that is new loans funded with earlier loans’ proceeds.
Deposits: $923.26
Principal Received: $386.48
Note Interest: $90.60
Service Charges: ( $5.60 )
I should be able to fund a new loan early next week. Right now I have 44 open loans; all but 5 of those are 25 dollar loans; the others are 50 dollars.
My return so far is 8.31%. I’ve been leaning new loans more toward A/B class vs the B/C class I was initially funding, and I did have one default that cost me 20 dollars (out of the 90 dollars interest). I’ll be concentrating more on B/C for a bit since I have a fairly solid A-class base.
Total income (principal + interest) was just under 35.00 last month, so I’m not at the 2-new-loans-a-month stage. I’m a few months away from that at this point unless I through a bit more cash at the account.
At some point I’d like to consistently throw 50 per new loan but right now unless I’ve just added cash, I don’t like to wait that long :).
I think most of those numbers are also on the statement PDFs which you can get from their website.
As of now: (yes I am shopping for a loan right now)
Available Cash $27.36
In Funding Notes $0.00
Outstanding Principal $1,042.26
Accrued Interest $5.74
Deposits: $1,025.38
Investment:
(includes In Funding)( $1,550.00 )
Principal Received:$438.26
Note Interest: $121.18
Net Annualized Return 4.40%
Weighted Average Rate 10.79%
Got clobbered by a couple high risk loans defaulting when I first started, was down -2.4% at one point but it has swung back pretty hard the other way as time has passed. I too have been building a big base of A-B loans to reinforce things against any further crashes. Pretty much every time a payment posts i gan another hundredth or two of a percantage point.
This is correct. I created the report myself from data in various locations on the site. It would be great if it were all in one place but, oh well.
I’m very happy with my rate of return. This kills everything else I’m doing, investmentwise, by a wide margin. Where else can I get 11% on my money?
I just put in another $250 today. Instead of doing $250 a quarter, I think it’ll be every month from now on.
Just what I actually sent to LC.
I’m going predominantly for Cs and Ds at this point. I’m still getting some Bs, but I’m not even looking at As anymore, especially since one of my As paid off really early.
Resist that urge! Lending Club most definitely keeps track of penny fractions (at least 1/100ths) so you’re not getting screwed by investing $25, and diversifying should be the major goal right now. I’ve got over 500 loans and I still feel like I need to be more diversified. The more loans you invest in, the tighter that normal curve of possible ROI will be. The only time I invest $50 in a loan is when I feel so confident that I want to bet on the guy twice- that’s different than just having a higher ‘base’ amount.
As for “waiting that long”, I suggest you do. They’ve been raising interest rates on their grades since January as the economy (and thus, LC’s competing investment options like T-bills and stocks) improves. If you invested a lot in April, like I did :(, you missed out on the .50% bump that came in May. I wouldn’t nickel-and-dime yourself by waiting to reinvest $25, but I would hold off on dumping $1,000s into it right now. Wait til August, when stocks typically suck and I think LC will ‘peak out’ on their rising interest rates.
Disclaimer: I know what happened in the past, but I don’t have a crystal ball. Ultimately, you’re responsible for your own results.
Well yeah - I’m not dumping thousands in, though I might move a small IRA CD there when it matures next year - that’s “only” 2K though. I’ll have to check on whether there are minimums / fees (I think there may be, and that would be below that minimum).
And by “waiting that long”, I mean I’d have cash sitting in the account, uninvested, until it grows to enough to make an investment (25, 50 or whatever). Lending Club already gets a lot of float time on our investments at various stages, so I’m motivated to get money reinvested as soon as I can.
What I’m finding as I’m choosing loans: there are often only 1 or two that I “like” when I’m sorting through the available ones. At the moment my parameters are “A/B/C, income verified” at a minimum; I try to filter by “LC reviewed” but that often cuts down too much. And after that I go with my gut - things like wedding / vacation expenses get thrown right out, ditto things with vague / missing descriptions (I’ve sometimes funded A-class loans like that but won’t touch those with B/C). So there’ll someday be times where I’ll have 50 bucks and not see much that I like, so might as well dump the whole 50.
Sorry you got bitten by investing a chunk a month too early. At least you should be getting enough paybacks from those that you are reinvesting the proceeds in the higher-rate loans.
When you did that chunk, did you basically choose a whole bunch of loans to fund over a day or two? or did you let it sit and grab a loan every few days as they appeared and looked good? Just curious as to how a larger investor (and compared with me, I suspect you qualify) does things.
Speaking of breakouts: Mine (by grade) is:
A: 17 loans (43%)
B: 16 loans (33%)
C: 10 loans (22%)
D: 1 loan (1%)
My one default was a C1. My early payoffs were B2, B3, B4 and C4.
With all that, my yield is, as noted, 8.31% I think I’ve done enough A-class loans for a bit; they’re safer but the yield is only 5ish percent.
What breakdowns do you guys have that are leading to your return rates?
And yet data show these to be two of the most profitable loan types.
I usually just turn on my saved filter and then check to see which have the lowest payment:income ratio. My filter is for credit consols with no delinquencies, A+B+C grades. I don’t do A grades anymore because the interest rates have gotten so small and the early payoff risk is so big that by the time you take out LC’s fee, there’s nothing left. If I wanted 5%, I’d buy the S&P500.
By the way, has anyone seen this site?
True. I suspect it’s because a lot of wedding loans are for small amounts. They’re easy to pay back. Not to mention the fact that marriage tends to be good for the finances.
Yeah, I suspect that this is a case where my moral judgment outweighs my financial judgment 
(I think spending a fortune on a huge wedding, if you don’t have the cash, is wasteful… ditto vacations).
Of course I’m leery of medical loans too - I checked once and those had a higher rate of default, and my one default was a medical loan. And those don’t offend my Holier Than Thou moral sense, LOL.
Interestingly, the linked site mentions moving expenses as having lower rates of return and that meshes with my gut feeling as well; there was a loan recently where the person did not (as far as I could tell) have a new job lined up but was planning to move. I skipped past that one.
Interesting. If you go to the stats tab, and lates by loan age - the figures are a tad scary for anything below grade A, toward the end of the loan life!
A 31-36 month old loan in grade A stands a 5.2% chsnce of defaulting, taking dates from 2005 to the present.
A 31-36 month loan in category B stands a 16.8% chance of defaulting. F and G go to 41% and 36%.
Now, this doesn’t take into account loans that got paid off early - so wouldn’t show up in those later stages. I wonder if anyone can find a way to determine how many loans pay off early?
I am not sure exactly what you are saying, but the data says that 5.2% of grade A loans will default by the end of 36 months, not that 5.2% will default between 31 and 36 months.
Meanwhile, one of my loans is in trouble on the first payment! I hope they have just screwed up setting up the payment mechanism.
I may be misreading it - but I was assuming those were for loans that happened to be in that particular life stage - so yeah, that would include defaults that occurred any time during the 36 month, but the denominator was the loans that were > 30 months in age at that time. So basically I agree with you :).
I did download their “statistics” CSV file a couple hours back. I seem to recall that I tried to bring that into Excel once but it was too large; I may try to read it into the desktop Oracle database and crunch some numbers. That would let me see records that were paid off early, I think.
Ouch on the “first payment” loan. I had one go that way but was brought current within the 15 day grace period.
Next month, I again saw “in grace period”… then it paid in full! I have NO idea what was going on. I did make a few cents profit on that one - the interest for the 2 months was about 15 cents more than the fees.