zcommodore

Most of my research that I do is done on a per-loan basis, not the size of the loans.  My reasoning for this is that lenders tend to lend similar amounts on each loan and the amount they lend seldom correlates to the size of the loan requested by the borrower.  A larger loan will just have more lenders on it.

A few days ago, I noted that the number of loans made on Prosper appeared to be going down after the update a couple of weeks ago.  I've updated the graph and you can see that I posted right around the time when the 10-day moving average was bottoming out and it has recovered somewhat.

I will point out that I don't keep older versions of graphs around since I host them on some webspace granted by my ISP and the space is limited.  I just overwrite the previous graph with the same name for the most part.

I noticed that, while the number of loans being made had appeared to be going down, the size of loans is up significantly this month. (Note this graph shows only the first half of November.)

I suspect the reasons for this are that people with very good credit, like the ones I pointed out yesterday that were getting funded more now, usually ask for and receive much larger loan sizes.  Also, if you have good credit, it is not common for you to ask for a small loan like $1-3K.  You would simply use an existing short-term line of credit rather than pay the 1% origination fee to Prosper unless you are simply "trying out the borrowing side".

Now, here's an interesting graph that seems to indicate an actual uptick in lender activity.

This graph is based on the number of business days when Prosper can manage financial transactions.  Basically, loans only originated on business days so I cut out all weekends and holidays and calculate the total amount of loans made per business day.  Once again, November numbers are for only the first half of the month.  Even still, the uptick in total amount of loans originated seems significant, especially with all the recent changes and an apparent lender backlash on the forums after the last change when listings were no longer viewable for a few days (subsequently changed).

It will be interesting to see how this number holds up through the last half of November and then December with the holidays.