Prosper Risk Analysis: 4 months later

While I was bored in Pueblo, I posted some graphs showing the historical risks associated with Prosper.com loans vs. various parameters. Here's the latest, with data pulled from LendingStats.com. These are all the loans from the inception of Prosper and thus not a snapshot of the conditions now. Compared with the last analysis, there's a general rise in risk levels across the board. Of course, the percentage of Defaulted loans would be higher since the delinquent loans a few months ago became defaulted over time. Use these to modify your search criteria when choosing which loans to bid; my preferences are below.

Disclaimer: I'm doing this mainly for investment, and my comments reflect that. Even though Prosper.com contains an element of people helping people (something that drew me to the site in the first place), I can't be too liberal with my small amount of income, especially after my first and only (so far) default with a high risk loan. The performance of my portfolio can be found here.

I used to search anywhere from AA-D, but now I generally invest in AA-B grade loans now only.

Lower DTI ratio loans are still risky, but notice the higher risk of higher DTI compared with the last analysis. Now I'd probably limit my search to somewhere between 20 to 40, which could substantially limit my options.

Sorry for the lack of title. This is the loan amount chart (of course you were smart enough to figure that out!). It used to be that the higher the amount, the safer the investment, but no longer. I'm thinking $10k to $20k as my new param.

Again, always, always, always bid only those loans with account verified. If some newbie borrower hasn't done it yet, use the Q&A feature to let them know that they should, for everyone's benefit.

This parameter used to not concern me, but now with the risk levels rising all over, I just might start limiting my bids to homeowners. After all, that's a collateral you can count on for small Prosper loans.

Auto-fund means that the loan closes as soon as the amount of bids equals the amount requested; it's for desperate people who can't wait another few days: dangerous investments.