My post on Friday about the shut down of Lendstats has generated a lot of comments. I have also had many emails from concerned investors, some who are thinking of no longer investing without access to the kind of information that Lendstats provides.
The good news is that there is an alternative out there, one that has been running for about a year now. It is called NickelSteamroller.com and it provides all the data that Lendstats provided but as of today it is only available for Lending Club investors. Michael, the creator of Nickel Steamroller is also an investor in Prosper and he would love to have a tool for them but he is waiting for Prosper to provide some additional pieces of information in their data download. This should happen in the very near future I have been told.
For now, though, Lending Club investors can switch to Nickel Steamroller and do their analysis there. There is a lot of information on Nickel Steamroller and I encourage you to spend some time exploring the site. The one part I am focusing on today is the Lending Club Return Forecaster which provides the same data as the Lending Club stats page on Lendstats. The implementation is a little different and there are even some additional features.
Introductory Video For NickelSteamroller.com
To show p2p investors how Nickel Steamroller works I have created this short video that shows everyone how to setup the filtering. As an example I use my Lending Club Filter 1 that I defined in my How am I Investing in 2012 post. This video is just for Lending Club investors, when the Prosper data is available I will do another video.
Prosper Investors Should Stay Tuned
I have spoken with Joe Toms, Chief Investment Officer, at Prosper today and he assures me that the data that Michael desires will be available soon. So Prosper investors shouldn’t have long to wait before there is robust analysis on the loan history.
