No live updates = better rates or is everyone Xmas shopping?

Since 17 Nov, closing rates for A and A+ have been 0.5-1.0% lower. I had assumed this was just supply and demand.
If auctions are more orderly (with Beta turned off) because buy bots have been tamed, then was that perhaps a cheaper way of solving the chaos than spending on IT developments?
But why has Beta stopped working? Was it simply turned off by Fractal Chaos? And was that because it was contributing to the chaos at busy times?

I got out of FC last year due to falling rates and some questionable defaults.

Having gotten a bit disillusioned about the shortage of loans on AC, I have had a modest punt on FC again. Been quietly surprised at the current offerings, including 9402 which I got at 11.1%. I can't bid during the day and it is difficult to work out where the rate will end. Certainly doesn't appear to be the same manic bidding frenzy at auction end that occurred previously.

I'm still ticking over, but given the SM rates which things are moving at, very few of the 'frantic auction closes' are interesting so I have been elsewhere instead. I hadn't noticed that live misinformation had been nobbled, but it would make sense since it generates lots of server activity even for people who have wandered off from their PC, or tablet, or whatever and left it pointing at an auction. I have the same issue with HL's live streaming FTSE data. I have seen (using F5, or reasonable equivalent) quite a few auctions where the bid data was still out of line with reality (9515 has had £5k or more too many bids shown as 'live', on several occasions, which is pretty extreme % error on a 15k auction) so the problem is not exactly fixed.
No comment from FC one assumes, although we have been telling them for over a year that the 'beta' was more like 'zeta' (which is sort of pre-alpha).

Yes it must be an unannounced trial to see if it improves performance, after which its demise will be confirmed.
It's not needed for the whole loans, nor for autobidders, nor for fixed rate loans such as property. Just for the diminishing band of dinosaur manual lenders (like me) who wish to leave their bidding till the last minute to get the maximum rate. FC are acting fairly smart here - unless my interpretation is wrong and they have not noticed that it's broken. We shall see. Has anyone complained on the FC forum? If not why would they bother to restore/fix it?

F5 seems to work ok for me, the last few days seem to have a whole load of small bids which drive down through the 10% range heading south.  Staying well out of those and happy being 0.1% down from an ending final figure.  It just takes time.

Here's a little tip for monitoring your bids without overheads of a whole page refresh :

Just add /my_bids onto the end of the URL for the auction and you'll get just the information on your bids.

e.g.  www.fundingcircle.com/loans/51260/auction - give you the full auction page and
        www.fundingcircle.com/loans/51260/auction/my_bids - gives you the my_bids data only

I find this much quicker to refresh than the main auction page and as long as you see a green tick your bid is still live.

In this example the main page was 1.7MB of data but the /my_bids page was only 450 bytes (with no bids though)