In my ongoing effort to create the best analysis tools for Prosper loans, I bring you 2 new features in this release and fix one huge missing element.
With these new features I suggest you go to your list of late loans and run these features on those loans. Examine the results and see if you see a pattern in the new Confidence feature or the reliance on a certain group.
0) Since LendingStats.com has not updated their data in almost 20 days (the missing element) I finally decided to find an alternate solution. I really appreciate the work LendingStats has done. But I do not like relying on 3rd parties which is exactly why I preferred to write the IE extension. The majority of the functionality is embedded on the computer you are running or on Prosper's website. BTW, many thanks to Prosper for continuing to improve their API!
With this release, the group performance information will rely solely on Prosper to display the information. As a result some of the data has changed, but only very slightly. The Best case ROI (Return on investment) is based on zero defaulting loans. The Experian ROI factors in the default rates as specified by Experian. The Prosper ROI is based on data gathered so far from actual Prosper loans. Basically loans that are 1 month or more late are considered default.
Please note Have Money is not a group that I like or trust. I believe the GL is utilizing P&D. Plus in just 5 months he has 222 loans. That is 44 loans a month on average. What kind of quality work does he put into each loan?
1) On the listing detail page, the Bid Details link already shows useful information. Warning of potential pump and dump schemes, true group leader participation, and the number of lenders actively bidding on this listing. In my analysis I have determined that being on a loan with less than 50 lenders puts you at a higher risk for a defaulting loan. This was one of the reasons I originally added this feature.
I have gone a step further and added a simple scale which indicates the confidence the listing will not default based on the other lenders bidding. It is broken into two components. The lenders that won their bids and the lenders that lost. Here is the bidding details from a loan I found using my Hot List. The two sets of numbers in this example, 5.7/5.54 and 5.01/4.42, indicate the level of confidence. These numbers represent high confidence.
To help understand the meaning lets use letters, so now we have x/y for the winning bids and a/b for the losing.
Ideally x and y will be close to each other, within a point. Likewise, a and b should be within a point. Ideally x and a should be within a point or two as should y and b.
Now for the analysis. If y or b is negative, then extreme caution should be used before bidding on the loan. If b is quite a few points larger than a this may indicate a pump and dump.
Ideal numbers are greater than 5. Anything below 4 should only be bid on after careful review. The algorithm will continue to evolve. I'll keep you updated.
2) I made a few changes to the loan search result and loan detail pages. From any loan search that presents multiple loans, now when you click to see the details you will be presented with next and previous links on the loan detail page. This makes it a lot easier to review your loans. So find your 3+ month late loans and easily review all of them without having to click back, get the retry message, etc!
Next on the loan detail page I added a link thanks to wiseclerk.com. He is providing the loan status changes over time. So now when you have a loan that just popped up as late you can easily review the loan status changes to see if this is a common occurrence for this borrower or something to be of concern. Just click the 'View loan status change' link.
