Please remember that nothing on this blog should be taken as investment advice.
What a start for the year!
First the Kuetzal scam and its ongoing legal actions. Then Envestio following on the same path, with concerning signs on also both Monethera and Wisefund.
Edit 28.3.2020: And now looks like Grupeer might follow the group. At this point, the P2P industry looks very fragile and I'm definitely going to reduce my position drastically.
And now the stock market plummeting because of the coronavirus!
This year is going to be awful in so many ways.
But I'm not panicking. I'm actually very well positioned right now for the future. What will I do?
Let's look back first on the couple of last months, as I skipped the update on February due to traveling.
Passive income was 954 € in February, but January measured -9,8k€ due to underwriting the whole Envestio portfolio.
The monthly income is going down since I'm making a shift towards stocks. The original reason for having such a heavy peer lending portfolio has been that stocks have been so very overvalued.
Last week I wrote how coronavirus impact my investing strategy. It's impossible to time the market, but I would imagine that there will be great volatility until the contagions start to level off. Most credible guess I've heard is that this will happen in April, as it gets warmer and sunnier.
I continue to have a large-ish P2P portfolio that still has a long term IRR of 10.3% (including Kuetzal and Envestio write-offs!), but my war chest for stocks is also fairly big.
I'm planning to dollar-cost average over the next ten weeks and I hope the markets will bottom out during that time. And if it doesn't I'll probably buy with the credit I have from Interactive Brokers.
But it's too early to talk about stocks, so let's go ahead and have a look at my P2P portfolio - how is that going?
955 € passive income in February
| Income | IRR | |
|---|---|---|
| Bondora | 290 € | 14% * |
| Lainaaja | 260 € | 10% * |
| Mintos | 107 € | 12% |
| Crowdestor | 91 € | 15% |
| Swaper | 75 € | 14% |
| Grupeer | 60 € | 14% |
| Viventor | 30 € | 8% |
| Peerberry | 18 € | 16% |
| Bulkestate | 11 € | 15% |
| Viainvest | 8 € | 10% |
| Iuvo | 5 € | 16% |
| Sun Exchange | 1€ | 4% |
| RoboCash | 12% | |
| Estateguru | 11% | |
| October | 6% | |
| Agrikaab | 32% ** | |
| Total | 956 € | 10.3% / 14% *** |
** Agrikaab has an irregular payment schedule and have recently pivoted
*** Long-term IRR is 10.3% including write-offs from Kuetzal and Envestio. IRR of assets currently in portfolio is 14%.
I'm still nicely in the green long-term: 10.3%. Sure, it stings when you lose thousands of euros in a short amount of time, but it hasn't been a fun ride for the stock market investors this year either.
Kuetzal and Envestio dug a big hole in my portfolio and I might be getting losses on Grupeer as well, but on the other hand, having alternative investments to stocks has shielded me (so far) from the stock sell-offs.
I'm now taking this opportunity to balance the other way, taking from P2P and eventually buying more stocks. I hate not being able to pick only honest, good quality platforms over the bad ones. At least I'm learning a lot.
Bondora
Bondora's IRR is still at 26%, but declining steadily.
Not everyone likes Bondora, since they don't provide buyback guarantees and you cannot easily exit the loans early. However, if you are in it for long term, Bondora might be something to at least look into. I wrote recently about how my Bondora loans are performing after 2½ years.
If for Bondora I give a 10% discount on the principal (which is a little optimistic) then the IRR drops to 20%. With a more pessimistic 20% discount the IRR sits at 13%.
Also please read my Bondora review.
Mintos
Nothing new to report on Mintos, except that Peachy has discontinued on the platform and filed for insolvency. This was a loan originator to be avoided anyway, so I had no exposure to it. While I love Mintos, I'm using some of the capital from it to build my war chest for stocks.
More in my Mintos review.
Crowdestor
Crowdestor had an IRR of 15% as some of the borrowers do not have a monthly schedule.
Although the beginning of the year showed some bad apples in this space, I continue to have trust on Crowdestor. They don't claim to have shady Hong Kong investors backing their buyback guarantees - instead they have a tiny fund they build themselves (one that will quickly run out if projects start to fail). It's still a high risk platform, but so far one of the best ones.
More in my Crowdestor review.
Swaper
Swaper is different from other platforms in that they issue the loans themselves. This reduces middle men, but can concentrate risk on the platform. It's definitely something to look into, if you haven't already!
More in my Swaper review.
Grupeer
More in my Grupeer review.
Viventor
Sun Exchange ☀️
Sun Exchange is a splendid way to invest in green energy by owning solar cells. I am planning to every year buy a lot of cells from Sun Exchange to compensate for my own emissions and then some, to be CO2 negative. I've already purchased more in March, to be installed on the uShaka shopping mall.
More in my Sun Exchange review.
Also, if you want a free solar cell, use my affiliate link to invest.
Trine ☀️
Trine is a spectacular sustainable investment crowdlending platform. With my 1,000 € investment I am offsetting 38 tonnes of CO2 while getting a 7% return.
I've covered more things in my Trine review, but if the topic of sustainable investing interests you, please read the post: Sustainable investing: how to profit while healing the planet.
Peerberry
Similarly to Fast Invest, Peerberry offers short-term loans with buyback guarantee. It's a very simple, clean platform again. Unlike Fast Invest, there's nothing shady about the owners and there's full transparency to loan originators. Great for anyone looking to diversify their consumer crowdlending portfolio.
Peerberry has grown to one of my favorite platforms. More in my Peerberry review.
Bulkestate
Bulkestate's IRR shows 15%, which is expected.
I only have one loan on the platform and are concentrating more on Estateguru. Bulkestate is not a bad platform, I just liked Estateguru more.
Viainvest
What I like most about Viainvest is that most of my money is in credit lines. These are very flexible loan instruments for the borrower, who can easily reduce and increase the loan as they need.
I know, a review of Viainvest is way overdue. I'll write one soon!
Iuvo
Iuvo deserves a proper review later, since it's not exactly like all the other platforms. Iuvo's buyback guarantee is weaker, which might be why some others might avoid it. Check back if you want to know what the true long-term IRR is on the platform!
Robocash
For RoboCash, I'd probably stick with the short-term consumer loans once these are paid back.
More on my Robocash review.
Estateguru
I got on Estateguru in January 2020 and it's hands down the best real estate platform I've seen. That's why I'm dropping Bulkestate and concentrating on Estateguru alone.I might still try other platforms, but it's hard to beat Estateguru. They cover so much information. The platform absolutely deserves its own review.
October
I also got on the French investment platform "October" in January. October is very thorough and the projects are on a completely different level compared to e.g. Crowdestor.Projects are large and institutional investors go 50% skin-in-the-game, so small investors are in good hands. Interest rates are lower though, so up to 7%.
For anyone who'd like to get better at lending to companies, October is a great platform, as they produce so much information. After this platform, you'd never invest with too little information again. I've learned an incredible amount by lending on October.
Agrikaab
Agrikaab has announced they will close due to the dire economic situation, which is unfortunate. They will still try to find a buyer for my camel. Fingers crossed someone will buy her and I can recoup some of my investment...Thanks for reading!
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