By that time Prosper had stopped allowing loans to borrowers with no or low credit rating so we couldn’t do it, and I ended up lending my money to others. Earlier this year my friend did achieve a credit rating that met Prosper’s criteria so I have one large loan along with many small ones. That is the idea of diversification with Prosper, make many small loans, and so far it’s worked for me.

I have a few late loans but have not had any default yet, and my aggregate interest rate is about 15%. You can see my stats at http://www.lendingstats.com/lenders/Florida67. There are plenty of statistics at http://www.lendingstats.com about Prosper as a whole, including top lenders (both in number of loans and amount), and some of the big (million dollar) lenders have horrible records. I don’t know how I’ve been so lucky!

I’ve tried the portfolio bidding, where you set criteria and automate the bidding process, but I don’t have as much confidence in that. I’d prefer to manually search loans and read the borrower’s pitch. That’s subjective, I mean they can write whatever they want, but I look at their credit ranking to help me decide how much confidence to have in what the lender has written about their reason for borrowing and ability to repay the loan in full. And isn’t that what the peer-to-peer idea is all about, looking at the borrowers and their situation indivudually?

For me the quiet period doesn’t have much effect except that I had recently recommended Prosper to my neighbors who are having some slow times with their business. The e-mail said this quiet period may last several months.