My BEST and WORST Investments in 2022

Happy new year everyone! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas time and that you were able to enjoy some time off with your friends and family.

Today I want to take a look back at 2022, which has been an extremely difficult year when it comes to investing. This time, instead of creating a separate monthly update, I figured it would make more sense to show you both my investment returns for December as well as the entire last year in a single post.

Let’s also review the predictions I made, to see if I got anything right or if I was completely off.

And as always, I’m going to talk about any important updates in P2P lending and stocks, which I like to cover via ETFs.

Please don’t forget that none of this is investment advice, just my personal opinion based on my own experience as an investor.

ETFs

Let’s begin with exchange traded funds aka ETFs, my preferred way of investing into stocks since 2017.

Over the past six years, my ETF portfolio, which I share with my wife, has grown to over 183.000€ in value:

Our strategy hasn’t changed. Throughout the entire last year we only bought a single ETF on a regular basis, the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World (ISIN: IE00BK5BQT80, VWCE), enabling us to invest into over 3.700 stocks from all over the world.

Prediction vs. Actual Returns in 2022

Let’s take a look at my unqualified prediction from a year ago:

Even though my ETFs are currently down more than 6% already in 2022, I still think they’ll end the year with positive returns overall. But I don’t think this year will be anywhere near as bullish as 2021. So I’m expecting a yearly return of around 5% from my ETFs in 2022.

From My Top 3 Investments in 2022

Well, as you probably know by now, 2022 got a lot worse for stocks, making it extremely hard not to see negative returns for the year unless you got lucky with specific picks or sectors.

I mean just look at how far these stocks, some of which had been very popular throughout 2020 and 2021 have gone down since their peak:

At the end of December 2022, Peloton was down -95%, Zoom -89%, Tesla a big favorite of many influential finance YouTubers -72% and Netflix dropped -59% from its peak.

Or about we look at Cathie Wood’s highly popular ARK Innovation ETF, which many of you asked me about over the past few years? I hope you didn’t buy that either.

It dropped -80% from its peak and -67% last year alone. It’s now back all the way to its August 2017 level!

Luckily, I never bet on single stocks or sectors. I prefer passively investing into the market long-term via ETFs. That way I never put myself into the position where I constantly question wether or not I made the right decision or when it’s the right time to buy or sell shares of a specific company.

But, because of everything that happened in 2022, I was still far off with my prediction.

After a pretty weak December our main ETF, the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World finished 2022 with a yearly performance of -13,01% (in €):

But let’s take a closer look at the numbers according to Portfolio Performance:

We started last year with an ETF portfolio value of 154.984€ and ended it with 178.450€. So far, so good.

But, what you can also see is that we added a lot of money, 46.736€, more than any single year before. A good chunk of this amount came from the 13.500€ we got back from our old apartment, some profits I realized from crypto holdings at the end 2021 and our cash reserves, which we reduced after seeing the market drop.

If the market hadn’t dropped, our ETF portfolio might have crossed the 200.000€ line, but I’m sure we’ll get there soon enough!

We also received 1.819,38€ in dividends, more than any year before, from our distributing ETF shares of the xTrackers MSCI World, which we purchased from 2017-2018 and the Vanguard FTSE All-World, which we bought until the end of 2020, before making the switch to the accumulating version of the same ETF.

And when looking at our yearly ETF returns more closely, we can see that we’ve had exceptional returns in the three years preceding 2022:

As a result, we had to see a negative year again at some point, which is exactly what happened.

Our ETF holdings are still up over 22.500€ including dividends since 2017, so we certainly can’t complain.

Also, since we’re investing for the long run, I actually don’t mind that the market dropped a bit. Remember, ETFs are long-term investments anyway, you should have a time horizon of at least 5 years, ideally 10 years or more. So when the market crashes, that simply means we get to buy the best stocks from all across the world at a discount.

Either way, we’ll keep buying the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World on a monthly basis, no matter which direction the market moves in the short-term.

Speaking of that, if you’re looking for the best low-cost broker in Europe to buy stocks or ETFs, I recommend checking out Interactive Brokers.

P2P Lending

Alright, let’s move on to my investments in P2P Lending.

Let’s start by taking a look at how each platform did in December and then review my total returns from P2P lending in 2022 and compare that to my prediction.

Mintos

• Income (December 2022): 40,21€
• IRR: 10,50%
• Invested since: 27.09.2018

Starting things off with Mintos, I’m a bit disappointed that the P2P marketplace doesn’t have more leverage to get lending companies to cover their debts on time.

ID Finance and Creditstar got a second extension on their pending payments, this time until July and May 2023 respectively. Both loan originators will again be paying higher interest rates to compensate investors.

That being said, I still remain positive regarding Mintos and I’m planning to increase my investments here in 2023 to take advantage of the higher interest rates for loans from lending companies with a rating of 7 or more. Hopefully this year will be a lot better as far as recoveries and pending payments are concerned – I’ll keep you posted on that.

• Sign up to Mintos via this link and invest 1.000€ or more before 31.03.2023, to get a €50 instant bonus and a 1% bonus on your average investment in the first 90 days.

Viainvest

• Income (December 2022): 36,49€
• IRR: 12,30%
• Invested since: 11.10.2019

Next we have Viainvest, which kept performing well for me throughout 2022.

The transition to asset backed securities after the platform became regulated has not been an easy ride. The split between loans and securities in the overview also continues to be confusing for new investors.

Still, the amount I have in older loans and credit lines continues to decrease on a monthly basis as those are being paid back, so we might not need the Invested in Loans section any more at some point in 2023.

On a more positive note, I’ve had zero issues as an investor on Viainvest after more than 3 years and the platform requires zero maintenance from my side.

Also, withholding taxes on interest payments have been reduced to 5%, which is great to see.

• Get 1% cashback on your average daily investment balance on Viainvest within the first 90 days via my link

Lendermarket

• Income (December 2022): 74,78€
• IRR: 15,23%
• Invested since: 21.11.2019

Even though Lendermarket has become my best performing platform over the past 3 years, I put my investments on hold here for now.

I’ve always only been interested in loans from one group of lending companies on Lendermarket, Creditstar. That’s because Creditstar has been profitable for over 8 years in a row and they publish audited financial statements, which made me confident in my investments into their loans and them upholding the buyback guarantee.

Apart from the fact that Creditstar has been extending more and more short-term loans on Lendermarket (which is why I currently have so many late loans in my account), they’ve been paying interest consistently. So from an investors perspective, I don’t have much to complain about.

However, they haven’t repaid all pending payments to other investors on Mintos as they had promised to do by the end of 2022. Instead, they’ve come to a new agreement to fully repay them by May 2023.

As I told you before, I don’t like Creditstar treating Mintos investors like second class citizens and I was actually hoping this would be resolved in 2022.

Since that didn’t happen, instead of increasing my Lendermarket account as I had originally planned, I decided to stop my auto invest for now. I’ll only restart it once the situation changes.

• Get 1% cashback on your investments on Lendermarket after 60 days by signing up via my link

Robocash

• Income (December 2022): 41,53€
• IRR: 12,42%
• Invested since: 19.01.2021

Meanwhile Robocash also performed very well throughout 2022, I didn’t have a single issue with any of my loans.

Sadly the platform decreased its interest rates again a bit, probably due to the high investor demand for its loans by the Robocash Group, which keeps posting exceptionally strong financial results:

Because of that, I had to lower the minimum interest rate in my auto invest to 11%.

• Sign up using this link, to get 1% cashback on all of your Robocash investments after 30 days.

Esketit

• Income (December 2022): 49,06€
• IRR: 14,13%
• Invested since: 19.09.2022

Next up we have Esketit, which has quickly become one of my favorite platforms in the P2P lending space. That’s also why I deposited an additional 500€ to my account in Mid December.

Last month was my best so far in earnings.

One thing you should be aware of is that Esketit changed its bank details last month, after the FCMC in Latvia announced its suspension of the Baltic International Bank due to its weak financial position.

So make sure to double check you’re wiring money to the correct bank account when depositing.

• Get a 1% bonus on all of your investments on Esketit within the first 90 days via my link.

Income

• Income (December 2022): 55,68€
• IRR: 12,49%
• Invested since: 17.03.2022

As for Income Marketplace, I had my best month so far in December.

I resumed my auto invest after seeing that the marketplace is slowly recovering funds from the suspended lending company ClickCash from Brazil, including interest.

• Get a 1% bonus on your average investment balance on Income after 30 days using this link.

Lande

• Income (December 2022): 14,56€
• IRR: 16,21%
• Invested since: 19.09.2022

My latest addition Lande, where I invest into loans secured by assets like land, machinery, grain or livestock, also performed well in December, as the first interest payments started coming in.

• Get a 1% bonus on all of your investments on Lande within the first 180 days via my link.

Withdrawal in Progress – Iuvo, Crowdestor, Bondster

P2P Lending Income December

Platform	State	Income	IRR	Value
Mintos	Active	40,21€	10,50%	7.309€
Viainvest	Active	36,49€	12,30%	4.077€
Robocash	Active	41,53€	12,42%	4.094€
Esketit	Active	49,06€	14,13%	4.626€
Income	Active	55,68€	12,49%	3.650€
Lande (new!)	Active	14,56€	16,21%	2.547€
Lendermarket	Waiting	74,78€	15,23%	3.341€
Iuvo Group	Leaving	6,84€	10,93%	1.325€
Bondster	Leaving	9,55€	12,40%	1.032€
EvoEstate	Leaving	0€	5,97%	300€
Crowdestor	Leaving	0€	6,56%	4.816€
Total		328,70€		37.117€

I earned a total of 328,70€ from P2P lending in December.

According to Portfolio Performance, which I use to track my investments, that’s a monthly return of 0,74% for December.

Prediction vs. Actual Returns in 2022

Now that we went over my P2P lending platforms one by one, let’s see my prediction from a year ago and compare that with my actual results:

I’m expecting more stable returns from my investments in P2P lending this year, ideally somewhere close to 10%.

Sure, I could aim for even higher returns by going all-in on platforms and loans with the highest interest rate, but that also means taking on a lot more risk.

I prefer spreading my risk by diversifying my investments in P2P lending over what I consider the best platforms and lending companies based on their track record and their financial statements.

From My Top 3 Investments in 2022

I still stand by what I said regarding not simply choosing investments based on the highest interest rate alone. As for my actual returns from P2P, let’s have a look:

I ended the year with an internal rate of return of 8,89% for 2022, so 1,11% below my expectation. Then again, my returns were definitely dragged down by some the funds that are still stuck and generating very little interest on Crowdestor and my funds in recovery on Mintos, which will hopefully be resolved soon.

When taking a closer look, I earned a total of 2.922,61€, so an average of 243,55€ per month from P2P lending in 2022. Overall, including the deposits I made, my P2P portfolio grew by 8.563€ last year, to a total of 37.420€.

I’m happy with close to 9% in returns in an extremely difficult year for investors, especially when comparing the performance to stocks or even low-risk assets like bonds which crashed even harder over the past 12 months.

Crypto – Prediction vs. Actual Returns in 2022

Let’s get to the 10% of my portfolio I have in highly speculative investments, namely crypto in the form of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Here are my predictions from a year ago, which couldn’t have been further off:

As for crypto, I think the performance will be influenced by how the stock market does and if investors are more risk-on or risk-off this year. If the stock market gets back to its all-time high this year (which I do expect), then I think there’s a good chance Bitcoin and Ethereum will pass their previous all-time high as well.

So my prediction for this speculative part of my portfolio is that we’ll see yearly returns of 50% by the end of 2022. Once again with plenty of price movements in both directions.

From My Top 3 Investments in 2022

In my defense, at least I did say the performance was going to be influenced by the stock market, which ended up crashing and investors clearly took risk off the table last year.

Still, to say crypto was disappointing in 2022 would be a massive understatement.

I actually don’t think it could have gone any worse.

Bitcoin dropped -63% in value and Ethereum dropped -66% last year.

That was definitely painful. I’m grateful that we have what I consider a diversified investment portfolio, with the majority in ETFs, followed by P2P lending and only have a small allocation to highly speculative investments like crypto.

My #1 Investment

Last but not least, there’s actually one investment that was a lot more time consuming and less passive than anything else I mentioned so far, but which paid massive dividends and out-performed everything else by far in 2022.

It started with a deposit of mine in January and then grew consistently month by month.

Can you guess what it was?

I’m of course talking about my baby girl, which was born last October! Within only two and a half months, she increased 80% in weight and 28% in size.

She even pays dividends several times per day in the form of cute smiles and full diapers. You just can’t beat those returns!

The Hardest Year So Far?

All jokes aside, 2022 was probably the most difficult year for investing that I’ve experienced in my short six years as an investor so far. It was almost impossible not to lose money, especially in the stock market.

But this is part of the journey, so don’t get discouraged if your portfolio is currently in the red. Things will get better again!

Still, I’d love to know how your investments performed last year in the comments below!

What was your best and worst investment?