What is the reasoning behind using a Gap Top? With a Gap Top the money will not always be lent out, and during this "lost time", the rates can go either higher or lower - if they go lower you are facing a double loss (lost time and lower rates). Do the higher rates you catch with a Gap Top make this risk worthwhile? Why not just set the "Spread Available Lends" to 1, so all offers go $25,000 deep?
The way it tends to play out in my testing (and on my year old live account) is like this:
After a few weeks, my loans will split into 100's of small chunks. Since each chuck is typically on a 2 day loan, dozens end up closing each hour. Every 10 minutes the bot will check that balance and split it into 4 offers. The lowest offer, set at the $25k mark is almost always taken quickly. During slightly above average movement periods, the next chunk at the second highest rate will be taken in that 10 minute period as well (this is usually only a few .001's of a % higher, but since it was taken in the same hour, it was worth the effort). The next 2 splits likely won't get taken during that 10 minute period unless the market is going crazy. So, the 10 minute bot will run, split what's left of those 2 higher points into 4 loans again, and start all over with the lowest 2 likely to get taken, and the highest 2 not. This will continue to happen until my available balance gets too low too split more than 2 times (under $150, since the smallest loan is $50). Then it will put that final balance up at the lowest rate, where it will promptly get taken. Generally, all of this takes less than an hour, maybe 2, so I've effectively lost no interest payments while gambling on a possible mini run that gets a little cash out at a higher rate. The other benefit is the constant splitting of loans into smaller chunks. This keeps my balance split across many small loans, which creates a constant stream of closing loans, and available balance, which in turn keeps me in a good position to catch any sudden rise in rates when the FRR wall is broken. In general, downward trends are slow and methodical, but the FRR wall breaks are fast and short lived, and there is nothing in the world more annoying than seeing the wall break and interest hit .75%, but having no available balance to take advantage of it. In average to good market conditions this has always worked well for me, eaking out a few extra % on my loans. In particularly slow markets, i tend to adjust these settings to make sure the money always lends out in an hour or less. While this is a bot, for best results, it does need occasional tweaking due to market conditions...
However, the high gap of $125,000 may be a bit high, depending on how much you have in the account.
Why should the Gap Top be lower if you have less money?
Thanks
Lower balances mean less available money, which means you'll likely not have enough for multiple splits ($50 / split minimum), so if your available balance is only $120 and your account has a high gap of $125k, it will create 2 splits (instead of the 3 or 4 it would do with more balance), and it will put the second split at the top where it likely won't get hit. With smaller balances your better off setting the split to 2 (or 1 if it's a really small balance, under $500 or so) and the top somewhere that's more likely to get hit in a 10 minute period.
Again though, this is just my philosophy, and I'm sure there are better ones out there. That's why I designed the bot to let users set things their own way.
( sorry if this is a thick read or if any of it doesn't make sense, I just typed this all out on a tablet in bed and this forum and auto correct do not like each other....)
If you want to insure your money stays lent out, make sure to change this to a lower number, or alternatively, move your money into other investments while waiting for the Bitfinex rate to increase. For reference, 0.065% is about 23% / year after fees, and .05% which is the lowest I will take before moving to other investments ends up being about 17% / year after fees...
