Silver install

I will no longer be updating either the 3.0 or the 2.x lines. I am moving to the new Silverlight application that I have made available for Firefox users. It runs in Internet Explorer as well. I personally have moved to this new application. You may of course continue to use the existing installs but again I will not be updating them.

Right now the features not included in the Silver application are: Notes, quick bid, auto bid, a few of the quick popups, most of the functionality found on the search result pages, and export of account information.

Based on feedback and interest I will add these features.

To start using the new Silver extension, please uninstall your existing installation of Prosper IE Extension. Then navigate here to install the new version.

The new Silver extension is faster. It should never require a new install... maybe if I add autobid. But everything else should be immediately available. Plus it is one code base for both browsers.

Version 3.0.3

Here is a link to the latest beta installer for Internet Explorer. I found an issue with the installation process so I removed the previous beta files.

I believe this addresses those installation issues... if you still have problems please let me know... either by leaving a comment here or by sending a message through Prosper.

Firefox users... I have created an install for you as well. It does not work in Firefox 3 beta... only 1.5 and 2.x. Not all of the features but getting there.

Version 3.0.2

First and most important. You must uninstall the AutoBid Service manually. I did not like that install process as it did not allow for easy updates of the software. I do not have any checks in the new installer that you have uninstalled.

So please uninstall. If not sure, just uninstall all Prosper IE Extension items. New install link is at the bottom of this post.

This install should address the installation issues some of you reported as well as the ugly error that popped up. It is still beta after all. But this release should allow the extension to function on XP and Vista and IE 7 and IE 8. Again I have not tested IE 6 as I no longer have that setup... but it should still work.

A couple of new features included in this release. Lender History is an interesting (though not perfect) addition to the bid details link on the listing detail page.

It shows you the current lender's average ROI, weighted ROI, and average loan age. Use this to determine the past ability of bidding lenders to pick good loans. The reason it is not perfect is the data is not realtime. It is about a day behind. I'm not sure how to address this so I added an indicator so you can tell how recent the snapshot is. Ideally you want to see the number of winning lenders for the number counted.

Still on the bid details popup, the confidence items at the bottom are realtime. Numbers around 7 or higher indicate better confidence. Anything below 5 I usually run away.

I also added a link on the search result pages to provide this same information. Click the magic wand and the same bidding details window will popup.


To me this is most useful on the Similar Loans page. Remember, the similar loans are those loans that are defaulting and similar to the listing you are examining. Click the bid details magic wand and you can see an accurate representation of the lender's ROI data. Very informative.

And if you do not use the Similar Loans feature, you really should. I also added speed improvements to the similar loans page. It should load quite a bit faster than before.

Watch Lenders has been improved. It now saves the list of lenders you watch... and provides a means to edit the list.

Okay as promised here is the new link. But please remember uninstall the Scheduler service first!

Version 3.0.1: Still beta but better

The beta works on IE7 and IE8beta. It should run on XP and Vista.

But first, many thanks to those that commented about my extension on this Prosper forum thread.

Someone commented on this blog that the Watch Lender feature was not working. I identifed a bug that if a lender had more than one winning bid on a single listing, the watch lender feature would silently fail. This has been addressed in this beta.

Someone raised an issue with the timeout warning and the count down timer that floats in the upper left corner of the screen. I have added 2 new options. One will disable the popup timeout warning. The other will prevent the floating countdown timer from appearing. You have always had the option of enabling or disabling the auto refresh which prevents Prosper from timing out your session (most of the time).

To make use of these options, click on Bid On Loans, FAVS, then Options.

Now on to AutoBid.

You must download the service installer which is the new piece. There is no update at this time so if you already installed it you do not need to again. If you have not installed it, click here.

There is however a new IE extension update, found here.

You must also register your login with Prosper to have access to the API bidding. Send an email to APIServices@prosper.com.

Once installed here is what the auto bid feature looks like. First you must setup the AutoBid service to make use of your login information. On the extension options page you will see Save Prosper Login Info. Click this link and you will see:

Enter the information and click save. The data is immediately encrypted then cleared. Now navigate to a listing detail page.

Click the Auto Bid link:


Which pops up this autobid dialog:



Enter the amount and the bid rate... click place auto bid. Currently the system is hard coded to bid 15 minutes prior to listing end. A note is automatically added to this listing indicating an auto bid and the listing is added to your favorites list. When you visit a listing detail page that you have auto bid on the Auto Bid link will display Stop Bid, and if an attempt to bid was made, the status will be displayed.

The other big change so far is to Similar Loans. First it displays a progress indicator of sorts. Due to some Prosper API limitations I query loans 1 month at a time. The limitation being that the loan object does not support searching by credit grade. I encourage you to go to this Prosper forum thread and bump it.


The second feature filtering of Similar Loans. Currently displayed is all loans that meet the Broad criteria, loan amount and credit grade. This has always annoyed me so I added the filter link.


Once you click it, the text will change to turn filter off, but nothing else changes. Go back and click on the 1 to 20. Very fast the display will change to show only loans that are clean. Now click 21 to 40. The bucket ranges remain the same but only the clean listings will display. Not perfect I know... it would be nice if the number buckets changed.

In the near future, this filter will be based on the Narrow criteria of the listing be examined.

There are still a couple issues with the Prosper API login. I believe Prosper logs you out of your API session, which is independent from your website login. So sometimes you will go to click on a quick link to show the extended credit info for a similar loan and nothing happens, just click it again. There are a couple other annoyances like this. I'm trying to track them down or at least display a message.

Beta 3.0: Auto bidding

To send me a message through Prosper, click here. You of course must be logged into Prosper already.

I am calling this a beta version. Don't worry I will document the features nicer once I bring it out of beta. It does work fantastic now, though. And the setup will get easier. Plus now if you had been using IE in protected mode, that annoying popup is gone.

I also modified Similar Loans which now has the ability to filter the returned listings. Prior to this beta, the Similar loans was all loans that matched the broad criteria. You can now click the Turn Filter on link, then click on the range of loans and only listings that are clean will be displayed, 0 dqs, 0 prs, etc. In the future the filter will be based on the narrow criteria.

Now there is a side effect to doing this. You will be prompted for your login information. Sometimes the popup works and sometimes it doesn't. So I suggest for now when you navigate to a listing detail page, click the quick bid link, enter login information then cancel the bid. This will setup your session to be logged in. This is actually the biggest annoyance right now... to make things just work better always do this extra login step.

Download and install this file. This will install the necessary files to create a system service that will perform the auto bidding on your behalf. Click on this link to install the new extension to Internet Explorer that makes use of this service. You must have Microsoft .NET version 3.5 installed... the installer should prompt you to do this if you don't.. but if you run the extension and do not see the magic wands click here to install .NET.

You will most likely be prompted by your firewall security to allow the ProsperIEExtService to access the network.... you must of course answer in the affirmative. Technically, the extension in IE talks to the webservice through port 6789. You may need this number if you are using a more sophisticated firewall security software.

First you must configure the service to access Prosper. This is done by navigating to http://www.prosper.com/ in IE. Then clicking the Bid On Loans tab, then the Fav link on the far right. Then click on Options. You will see a new item here called Save Prosper Login Info. Click on this and you will be presented with a dialog to enter your prosper email and password info. The same values you use to log into the Prosper website. Don't worry this information is immediately encrypted.

Then navigate to a listing you would like to experiment with. You will see a new quick link at the top of the listing detail called Auto Bid. You will be prompted for 2 bits of information, the amount to bid and the interest rate. The bid will be schedule to occur 15 minutes prior to the listing end time. Two things happen when you click place bid... 1) the listing is added to your Favorites List and 2) a note is added indicating you placed an auto bid. The Auto Bid link renames itself to Stop Bid, which does just what you would expect.

My advice is to enter less than $50 to verify your setup is working. The system will attempt to place the bid but it will be rejected by Prosper. After the attempt, the Stop Bid link will display the status message from Prosper, either success or failure. Because of the 15 minutes you really cannot use auto bid on listings ending in less than 15 minutes.

Let me know if you have any issues. I will work on making it more user friendly but let me know how it works if you do use it. And as always donation are appreciated.

Version 2.1.6: First change for Portfolio Plans

Of course just as soon as I release my first use of the bidding API, Prosper takes the entire API offline yesterday. Then the Performance Page is broken this morning.

The first change in this release is upon a quick bid my extension will no longer autorefresh. You must click the link as I described in the earlier post. I prefer to see that the status returned from the bid.

Second, I noticed this forum entry. It provides a workaround to be able to see the performance of a portfolio plan's performance. I hate workarounds! And this one is terrible.

So with this release, whenever you are on a saved search you will see a new link under the "Delete Saved Search" called "View Performance", look for the magic wand. For Portfolio Plans, follow the workaround, click Edit Criteria, then View Listings, then when the new window pops up (which is just a saved search), click View Performance.

Even if you do not use Portfolio Plans you can benefit from examining your saved search's performance.

Version 2.1.5: Quick bidding

Important update: You must send an email to APIServices@prosper.com asking to have your account enabled for API bidding. I think you have to send it from the email account that is associated with your Prosper account.

Personally I do not like the many pages that Prosper throws at you when you want to place bid. And as I have stated before I do not think the Estimated Loss is at all a relevant metric for placing a bid on a single listing. You can have an estimated loss based on an entire portfolio of listings, but not on a single listing (in my opinion). You can have an estimated chance of default, which is what I provide in the market analysis section.

Speaking of the Market Analysis... I have never found the Narrow selection useful. So I have modified. It now displays the same information as the Specific but minus the number of inquiries criteria. If you have a credit report with 0 inquiries the specific selection will find very few loans... use the Narrow to find more. Feedback is welcome.

My first public use of the new bidding by the API is included in this release. Back to my dislike of the many pages Prosper shows when you want to bid. I have now added a link, Place a quick bid. It provides a popup that allows you to specify the amount and the minimum interest rate, of course.

In order to use this feature you will have to login to the Prosper API. This login is separate from being logged into the website. Again I don't care about your email address or password. But if you want to use this feature you have to enter the values in a popup. It looks like this:

So click the place a quick bid link and you will be presented with this just once per session. Once successful, click the place a quick bid link again. Please note you cannot hit the enter key to sign in, you must click the button. You will then see this:


Please note, I do not validate the amount and bid rate fields. If you enter less than $50 a nice error message appears, if your interest rate is too high, you receive an okay error message. Both provided by Prosper. Now if you enter letters or other nonsense you get a less nice error.

Once the bid is successful, you will be presented with a message as well as an option to refresh the page, which I recommend you do so that you can see your bid like this. Note the bid type.


Also if you find this listing again on a search result it will correctly indicate your bid.

Enjoy.

New feature: API bidding

What does this mean? Well Prosper is now allowing to bid through API. I will be implementing a new application that works in conjunction with the current extension to IE. This new app will run as a Windows's service and place bids on listings you identify a few minutes prior to the listing end time. Thus ensuring that you will not be outbid, preventing your bid from causing the rate to bid down, keeping your money from being tied up for 7 days.

You will be able to specify your rate limits and amount to bid.

Now that you have read this, please go back to the Prosper forums and leave comments. I'm interested in how useful this feature would be.

Export your loan details

From the Your Account page, click View Recent Loans... only you won't be viewing just recent loans but all of your loans... I modify that link. Then on the resulting page I add a button called Export. When complete click View Export Link. The easist way to make the sample viewable is a PDF file... so click here. It will take time to download all of this data if you have a lot of loans. I have 4 pages worth and it takes around 5 minutes.

You will see principal and interest paid, and if necessary the loan amount collected from defaults. Not shown in the PDF is a rollup summary that calculates your ROI. I show two numbers, best case and current based on all lates defaulting as of right now. Basically the numbers have shown that 85% of the time a late becomes a default. So I take the worse case and say if it is late at any stage it is a default. One thing to note about this ROI calculation as well as all the others out there.. none of them can take into account the actual amount of money you have placed into Prosper. It is only based on the amount you have bid including re-investments... which in my case is a few thousand dollars higher than the amount I have actually invested. I prefer to examine my ROI based on my initial investment... so I change cell C1 to that amount.

Version 2.1.4: Default rates

Thanks to feedback I have modified the popup for the Broad, Narrow, and Specific Market Analysis to show two new data points... One is the average lender rate for Similar Loans. Of course if Specific is too specific the average lender rate may not be displayed. The second is to show the default rate. It looks like this.



Historically if a loan goes 1 month late it is at least 85% sure that it will default. So pessimistically if a loan is late at any stage, it counts against the default rate displayed.

The second change in this release is related to the Group performance summary. If a borrower is part of a group, in the Borrower Info section you can click the magic wand next to the group's name and a popup appears that displays the group's performance. It looks like this:



Old timers may recognize this group. The value for "Estimated ROI assuming all lates default" is the status of the group as of today. So if you had invested $50 in each of the 819 loans you would earn a -1.89%. This number is close. The Prosper API does not provide all the info for me to get the exact number. I do not have debt sales nor the exact month that a lender stopped paying. I actually think the number would be less.

Don't forget to check out my analysis of Prosper's member growth.

Overview of Features:

I thought it was time to create another overview of the features my extension provides. Basically, wherever you find a magic wand hover or click to learn more about that feature. Most features popup additional info.

In this blog, click the images to see them larger.



On a listing detail page you will notice two new sections of links.

• Hide: prevents the listing from showing up on search results


• Watch: add this borrower to my extension's favorite list. Watching a borrower allows for relists to show up on your favorites list


• Alert: if you use gmail you can easily receive email alerts as the listing approaches its ending time


• Notes: you can save notes about the borrower (not the listing) again great for relists or borrowers coming back for a 2nd loan

The Market Analysis is my favorite addition. These links all make use of Prosper's Marketplace performance page. I just plug in the relevant information to limit the search to similar loans. Typically I just click the magic wand on these to see the popup. If you want to see the full page, click on the broad, narrow, specific link to open a new window to Prosper's Marketplace performance page. Here is an example after clicking the Broad magic wand.



So much useful info here. First hover of (details) and it will tell you what criteria is used for this info. Very useful when you click on the Specific magic wand. This average interest rate is more reliable than the one Prosper gives, which is based on huge buckets. Mine is more relevant to the listing you are examining. On this popup I examine the percent of loans that are current. In this example it is 78.77%, that gives a 21.23% chance of defaulting. Historically 85% of loans that go 1 month late default. So I count any loan that is late at any point as defaulted.

I examine the broad and specific market analysis the most. I strive to only bid on listings that have a specific chance of defaulting less than 10%. Not shown, but this particular listing had a specific 19% chance of defaulting.

After examining the chance of defaulting, I will then click on Similar Loans. This opens a new window that shows all the loans that are defaulting that are similar to this listing. This gives you the opportunity, if you wish, to examine every loan to try and determine why it defaulted... and determine if your listing is like those and therefore has an increased chance of defaulting. Depending on the number of loans that are similar this page can take awhile to load... so often I will click it first then go back to the original listing and perform analysis, then go check the similar page.



The loans are displayed in descending origination date... most recent first. See all those magic wands... click on them... do not click on the listing link as this will open the listing in the browser, and the similar loans will have to be reloaded. I'll try and automatically open the listing in a new window. Back to the magic wands... they will display the listing description, the credit info, the borrower description... all in nice popups. For the credit info you have to provide your login information... don't worry I do not keep it. This is required to access the data through Prosper's API.

If you do this enough you will often see the lightning bolts... as I have said before... the lightning bolt increased your chance of getting burned... stay away from them.

Now start clicking on the magic wand next to the loan's credit info. You will quickly start to see trends.... does your listing match these? If so stay away.

There is just so much information in this page hopefully you will take the time to study and learn.

At the very top of the page is a link in big capital letters... VIEW ADDITIONAL INFO. Click it and you get something like this in a new window:

Loan Origination
Year.Month : Total : Late Loans
2006.04 : 2 : 1 : 50.00%
2006.05 : 2 : 2 : 100.00%
2006.07 : 1 : 0
2006.08 : 4 : 1 : 25.00%
2006.10 : 1 : 0
2006.11 : 4 : 1 : 25.00%
2006.12 : 4 : 0
2007.01 : 15 : 3 : 20.00%
2007.02 : 7 : 4 : 57.14%
2007.03 : 8 : 2 : 25.00%
2007.04 : 20 : 9 : 45.00%
2007.05 : 8 : 2 : 25.00%
2007.06 : 16 : 1 : 6.25%
2007.07 : 6 : 0
2007.08 : 8 : 1 : 12.50%
2007.09 : 14 : 3 : 21.43%
2007.10 : 7 : 1 : 14.29%
2007.11 : 19 : 0
2007.12 : 8 : 0
2008.01 : 11 : 0
Thru 2006.6 :4 : 3 : 75.00%
Thru 2006.12:12 : 5 : 41.67%
Thru 2007.6 :86 : 26 : 30.23%
Thru 2007.12:115 : 31 : 26.96%
Total :165 : 31 : 18.79%
Number of similar loans created in the past month: 7

Dates of significant change: Aug-2006 and Feb-2007
Additional credit info was added on these dates

Again you can learn a lot about this data. In this case not a lot of similar loans are created each month. You can see that the trend for the defaulting rate is rising. As you hopefully already know, as loans age the default rate increases. This page attempts to show you how drastic this trend is.

I have also added some quick links to useful information to the borrower info section on the listing detail page.



These next few features are vital to my analysis of the listing... sorry I have not uploaded images of these.

The wand next to the group name will popup a detailed list of this group's default success or failure... number of loans, etc. Click the wand next to the Q&As and you will see all of them, rather than just the first few. Click the wand next to the recent listings and you will see all of the listings... not just recent. Right click in the popup to view the prior listings... you can learn a lot by doing this!

In the Endorsements section I add a link called Verify Bids which will determine if the endorser's bid still stands. Typically GLs bid at the highest rate, get bid off... some even practice pump and dump... bid large, large amounts to attract attention.

Version 2.1.3: New average rate

First - please let me know if you have any issues with this install. I have changed an underlying component that should not impact anyone... but since there are so many window's configurations ... never say never.

I have been placing the average rate on the listing detail page and the listing search page. This of course gives you guidance on the listing's interest rate to determine if you are getting a good rate.

However, I have used Prosper's rolling 30 day average rate which I have long felt was flawed. This rate is based on huge loan buckets, $1000-$5000 and $5001-$9999 and $10,000-$25,0000. In case you don't want to do the math, that is a $15k spread on the large loans and about $5k on the other ones.

To me there is a huge difference between a $10k listing and a $25k listing.

I have added to my Market Analysis popups the average rate for loans that are similar to the listing. So click on the Broad, Specific, Narrow, etc. magic wands and you will see the average lender rate based on that criteria. This will give you a much more realistic average rate.

I utilize Prosper's marketplace performance page to get this info. So sometimes the Specific selection will not return an average rate if the marketplace performance page has none. Use the Broad in this case.

Version 2.1.2: Updated to similar loans

It once again displays the loans in descending date order. This way it is easier to see the more recent loans and determine why they defaulted. Also on the additional info link on the similar loan page I have added some summary stats like this:

Thru 2006.6 :11 : 2 : 18.18%
Thru 2006.12:48 : 9 : 18.75%
Thru 2007.6 :102 : 15 : 14.71%
Thru 2007.12:102 : 15 : 14.71%
Total :334 : 15 : 4.49%

Basically it shows the number of loans and number of defaulted loans for the various periods. As in this example... even though the average for the entire loan set is 4.4%, you can see a trend as the loans age for the default rate to jump to 14%.

Just another metric I use to look for reasons not to bid on a loan. That is the essence of my advice. The more I study the similar loans prior to bidding, the better I understand what to look for in new listings that I bid... I highly recommend you spend the time as well.

Need your help

Prosper's censors on the forums have decided to silence my posts. For the past week I have attempted to post about 10 replies... none have appeared. I was offering my analysis of particular listings posted in the lender forum... utilizing the features of my extension.

Yet my posts did not have links to my sites, this blog. Instead I referred people to my Prosper member page to read further about my strategies.... which I did list my blog there.

I have requested an explanation from support in an email... no response.

If you have been frustrated with Prosper's new censorship policies on the forums please send support a message complaining.

Maybe if enough lenders complain we can bring a more productive forum back to Prosper.

Version 2.1.1: new feature on similar loans

Some minor fixes around Similar loans. And a new feature. Once you click on Similar Loans on the detail page a new window pops up showing all the defaulting loans similar to the listing you are reviewing. A new link appears at the top of this new page. "View Additional Info" Okay not a very creative title.

This will popup another new window that shows a month by month breakdown of the defaulting loans... showing how many originated in each month and how many of those are now defaulting. Why is this interesting you ask?

You can see the trend of defaults increasing as loans age. In this example the older loans from 2006 are defaulting at 20-30% yet the average is 9%. So I would expect the newer loans to trend up towards the 20%. So over time you have a 20% chance that this listing will default.

Loan Origination
Year.Month : Total : Late Loans
2006.02 : 4 : 1 : 25.00%
2006.03 : 4 : 0
2006.04 : 13 : 4 : 30.77%
2006.05 : 10 : 2 : 20.00%
2006.06 : 20 : 4 : 20.00%
2006.07 : 13 : 3 : 23.08%
2006.08 : 25 : 5 : 20.00%
2006.09 : 26 : 3 : 11.54%
2006.10 : 24 : 3 : 12.50%
2006.11 : 14 : 3 : 21.43%
2006.12 : 14 : 2 : 14.29%
2007.01 : 33 : 0
2007.02 : 36 : 5 : 13.89%
2007.03 : 39 : 3 : 7.69%
2007.04 : 38 : 8 : 21.05%
2007.05 : 54 : 3 : 5.56%
2007.06 : 46 : 6 : 13.04%
2007.07 : 54 : 5 : 9.26%
2007.08 : 50 : 4 : 8.00%
2007.09 : 40 : 1 : 2.50%
2007.10 : 39 : 1 : 2.56%
2007.11 : 36 : 0
2007.12 : 63 : 0
2008.01 : 2 : 0
Total :697 : 66 : 9.47%

Number of similar loans created in the past month: 65

Dates of significant change: Aug-2006 and Feb-2007
Additional credit info was added on these dates

Version 2.1.0: Fixes to site changes

Well it has been awhile... a few features had stopped working when Prosper changed their site. This update restores most features. Nothing new was added but minor features had to be removed because of the Prosper changes.

The most useful features I still believe are the Market Analysis popups and Similar Loans. Don't leave home without them!

Also check out my analysis of Member Growth. Basically Prosper's growth has been static.