All newbs should lurk on the Reddit Personal Finance forum. and buy Ric Edelman's 'The Truth about Money'

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics

Whats everyones thoughts on Lending Club?

@Zyzz Thanks, yes this is stuff that has been in the back of my mind. I'm just slowly selling my btc piece by piece

I was in around june july time, so my selling off 33% of my btc I've gotten my money back

@Deleted User I used lending tree as a borrower, it was fine on my end.

I invested 100 bucks back about a year ago and forgot about and ended up making fairly good positive returns but have been reading some bad reviews lately on Lending Club itself.

@Deleted User Like what?

Returns or the bad press?

Bad press

There was a scandal in the administration. During the founding the owners bought a bunch of loans to boost popularity

And the other big peer lender has been outperforming lately

From what I've seen as well, many people use automatic investing and then aren't happy when they have so many loan defaults because they don't look at who they're lending money to.

huh

@Deleted User I've run about $20K through lendingclub and gotten a 5.4% return so far. It will probably go down a few more percentage points by the time my existing notes conclude.

I've been happy with it, but I'm not doing automatic investing or putting any additional capital into it. I've read too many negative things about it.

@ThisIsChris congrats on the nice gains. i wouldn't leave anything on the table that youre not comfortable with losing. i wish i could be more optimistic about BTC but i have no way of valuing this currency so i have no way of telling if its over or undervalued. if this were a company we could do a discounted cash flow analysis or compare its PE ratio to peers and have a better understanding as to its valuation. i was talking to @Deleted User about this earlier but i believe BTC is rising off of the "Greater Fool Theory" also look up the Holland Tulip Mania. I would not be surprised if it plays out similarly. We shall see

@here Sunday the 10th at 9PM Eastern, I will give a short seminar explaining options on the "voicechat" channel. My goal is that anyone listening will come away understanding what options are, the difference between a call and a put, the meaning of "strike price," "expiration," and "exercising," and the basics of how options are priced on the open market. If you understand these you'll be able to understand an options chain, and you'll have a solid foundation to understand sophisticated options trading strategies. I'll try to make it interesting, informative, and fun.

I've been very satisfied with Lending Club, I have automatic investing set up, and the returns have been good. I've used it for years now.

What's your rate been if you don't mind sharing?

The market obviously would have done far better, but the interest from Lending Club has always been solid. Yeah just a minute let me go get an accurate number.

5.92 for me.

nice!

Which is rather lower than it was.

It was up in the mid sixes.

So now I'm a bit chapped.

I was over 10% for the first six months

I don't look at it much, it just makes money.

and then....

@Deleted User i got into lending club back in 2014. I stopped buying notes about 2-3 years ago because i had an inordinate amount of defaults. i used a screen on what used to be called nickelsteamroller.com that showed very low default rates. the defaults in my portfolio exceeded what i thought i should have had by a lot. my return was about a 6% or so (according to them - which is higher than what it actually should be). with the risk of fraud and abuse, the understanding that the company makes money off of originations (incentive to make loans at any cost - even to those who shouldn't get loans), and lack of liquidity(I need a higher return than 6% for the lack of liquidity) I have decided to discontinue investing in LC notes. If you are looking for a 6% or so yield with good liquidity i can point you to some preferred stock

What tranches do you primarily invest in? @Why Tea

Point me at some preferred stock then.

@Zyzz That's exactly why I stopped automatic investing.

@Why Tea CLNS-J, AHT-I, TWO-C. Those are all the ones I am in.. they all yield ~7%

Thanks for the tip, @Zyzz

So Lending Club loans are financed by masses of Lending Club investors?

Correct