My Investments 01/2022 (Why I Added Bondster)

After a pretty crazy month with plenty of volatility, it’s about time we take a look at the damage or in other words, how my investment portfolio performed in January 2022.

As usual, I’ll cover all my investments: P2P lending, stocks in the form of ETFs and my high risk crypto assets.

We’ll have a closer look at how everything did and discuss all important events in the market and the peer to peer lending space. I even added a new platform to my investments.

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

Let’s begin with the largest chunk of my investments, ETFs.

ETFs

Here, my wife and I are sticking to our automated, simple investment strategy, where we just buy the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World (ISIN: IE00BK5BQT80, Ticker: VWCE) every month.

We don’t really care what the market does from month to month, since we’re investing long-term anyway.

Still, January was pretty intense. 

We saw a sharp correction in the stock market, where our ETF portfolio lost almost 8%, close to 10.000€ in value within only a few weeks. 

I wrote about it recently, where I talked about why it may have happened as well as my thought process regarding market corrections in general. If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure you check it out:

Luckily, our ETF recovered a bit until the end of the month, but still finished January down -3,34% overall.

If you’re new to stocks and ETFs, the past few weeks were probably a good reminder to treat these as long-term investments, not something to jump in and out of for a quick profit.

And if, like me, you’re still in the process of building your nest egg for retirement, you should be happy to see the market drop anyway, as it allows you to get more shares at a discount.

• My favorite low-cost brokerage accounts for stocks & ETFs
• ETF Investing for Europeans in 2022 (Incl. Broker Tutorials)

P2P Lending

Next, let’s have a look at my investments in P2P lending. These were not affected by everything that was going on in the stock market, so January was a good month overall.

I even added a new platform, something I hadn’t done in a while.

This is my platform allocation on the 1st of February, 2022:

It already includes my newest addition, Bondster. Meanwhile, I’m still in the process of removing my funds from Crowdestor.

Let’s have a look at how each platform did individually.

Mintos

• Income (January 2022): 34,80€
• IRR: 11,38%
• Invested since: 27.09.2018

January marked the lowest interest earnings since Mid 2019 on Mintos. Likely because for the first time in a while, my funds in recovery started increasing again. 

That’s due to the situation with Wowwo, the Turkish car loan originator, which ran into financial issues due to the Turkish lira losing a lot of value against the Euro within a short amount of time.

According to the latest update, Wowwo offered to transfer the borrower’s repayments in TRL instead of Euros, which would lead to a loss for investors.  Mintos declined and is negotiating another solution instead, to achieve the best possible outcome for investors.

Until this happened, Wowwo had a good rating on Mintos. Not only that, loans secured by cars are generally less risky compared to uncollateralized loans, something even Mintos promoted. 

However, I have to admit I was under the assumption Wowwo was hedging its currency exposure to the euro and turkish lira. Since that was not the case, in my opinion, Mintos should have downgraded the loan originator’s rating a lot sooner.

This means that even investors who chose the conservative investment strategy on Mintos could now have up to 15% of their portfolio in recovery. 

That reflects really badly on Mintos as a platform and its risk management. I’m hoping this gets resolved soon and that the repayments by Wowwo don’t drag on a few years. 

Until there’s more clarity, I made the decision to stop recommending Mintos to new investors and to start moving repayments to more reliable platforms. I’ll update my Top 5 in P2P Lending article soon to reflect that.

Either way, I’ll keep you posted.

Viainvest

• Income (January 2022): 30,92€
• IRR: 12,05%
• Invested since: 11.10.2019

Meanwhile, January was one of my best months on Viainvest so far.

Two weeks ago, the platform changed its interest rates for loans from Sweden, Romania and the Czech Republic to 10% per year, while loans from Poland and Latvia will keep paying 11%.

Since I like to diversify over as many countries as possible, I changed the minimum interest rate in my auto invest to 10% per year:

With these settings, the auto invest should also pick up higher interest loans from Poland and Latvia when they’re available. 

I’m perfectly fine with loans paying 10-11% per year on Viainvest, as I’m very happy with the platform and its loan performance after close to two and a half years as an investor.

• Get a 10€ signup bonus on Viainvest via my link.

Robocash

• Income (January 2022): 35,02€
• IRR: 12,14%
• Invested since: 19.01.2021

My investments on Robocash also did very well last month, no complaints here.

Lendermarket

• Income (January 2022): 42,70€
• IRR: 14,52%
• Invested since: 21.11.2019

Creditstar, the group of lending companies offering all the loans on Lendermarket, published its financial report for the 4th quarter of 2021.

According to the income statement, the group generated a net profit of 1,86 million euros in Q4 and over 7 million euros in net profit for the full year 2021.

Those are very strong numbers, making me confident in my investments on Lendermarket and Creditstar’s ability to fulfill its buyback guarantee when needed.

• Get 1% cashback on your investments on Lendermarket after 60 days by signing up via my link. Between February 23rd – March 20th, the platform is running an additional promotion.

Iuvo Group

• Income (January 2022): 16,12€
• IRR: 11,60%
• Invested since: 05.10.2018

I have to admit, I’ve been a bit disappointed about the platform’s lack of communication regarding some of my funds which have in recovery since 2020, from the Polish loan originator CBC. 

Their last update was from August 2021. I reached out to them and they told me the lawsuit is still ongoing, but the process is slow. I still think Iuvo Group investors deserve more regular updates, even if nothing noteworthy happened.

• Get 0,75% cashback on your Iuvo Group investments after 60 days when signing up via my link.

Crowdestor

• Income (January 2022): 24,78€
• IRR: 8,38%
• Invested since: 03.04.2019

In January, I withdrew 156€ from Crowdestor, as I’m planning to leave this platform entirely. 26 out of my 37 remaining loans are still late.

Bondora Go & Grow

• Income (January 2022): 10,04€
• IRR (incl. withdrawals): 6,68%
• Invested since: 01.09.2018

I’m planning to use Bondora Go & Grow a bit more to earn interest on some cash I need to have more readily available this year. As a result, I already deposited an additional 1.000€ to my account in the beginning of February:

I’ll likely add 1.000€ more on the 1st of March. As for now, that’s still the limit on Go & Grow.

• Get a 5€ bonus on Bondora when you sign up via my link and invest 10€ or more.

EstateGuru

• Income (January 2022): 6,56€
• IRR: 7,71%
• Invested since: 12.10.2020

I withdrew 116€ from EstateGuru, as the average interest rate is currently too low for my taste.

• Use this link for a 0,5% bonus on EstateGuru for the first 3 months.

Bondster – Why I Added This P2P Platform

Now, let’s get to the newest addition to my P2P portfolio, Bondster.

Why I added this platform:

1. Bondster is a P2P lending marketplace founded in 2017, based in the Czech Republic and currently has over 15.000 investors. So we’re not talking about a new kid on the block any more, the platform has a good track record.
2. Bondster seems to have handled the 2020 crisis a lot better than other marketplaces like Mintos. The funded loan volume here is above its pre pandemic levels, something that Mintos hasn’t been able to achieve. 
3. I asked some seasoned investors like my friend Bernhard Hummel about their experience and they only had good things to say about the platform.
4. Bondster pays the highest interest rates for loans from a few loan originators that are also active on Mintos and Iuvo Group. Which likely means the platform is taking a smaller cut from the interest earned by investors. If you were planning to invest into some of these loans on other platforms anyway, you might as well do that we’re you’re getting the highest interest rate for it:
   • Compared to Iuvo, Bondster pays 0,6% more for Kviku loans
   • Compared to Mintos, 2% more for DanaRupiah, 4% more for Lime and 5% more for RapiCredit loans.
5. The platform offers loans from a few lending companies you can’t find anywhere else. I’m a big fan of the new loans offered by ACEMA, which not only come with a buyback guarantee by the profitable lending company, but are also backed by collateral in the form of bitcoin, which can be easily liquidated at any time to pay investors. So far that has worked really well. In fact, some investors even earned up to 28% interest per year on some of these loans instead of the expected 10%, as ACEMA shared the proceeds with investors.

• Income (January 2022): 0,27€
• Invested since: 25.01.2022

I added 2.000€ to my account on January 25th. Luckily, Bondster has a reliable autoinvest, which was easy to set up.

Bondster Autoinvest

Here are my own settings right now:

Unless you’re living in the Czech Republic, make sure you only select investments in Euros.

Like Mintos, Bondster also offers automated investment strategies you can choose. Personally, I prefer choosing lending companies manually, based on their published financial results so far. You can find a list of all loan providers and statements on the Bondster homepage.

• Loan originator: Acema, Kviku, Lime Zaim, Rapicredit, Ibancar, ITF, Autofino, Alende, Nunu, Danarupiah, Okcredit.
• Interest rate: 10% minimum
• Term to maturity: 0 to 30 months
• Buyback: Yes
• Loan status: Properly paid

You can turn diversification on in the beginning and turn it off temporarily or change something if your funds aren’t fully invested within 24 hours.

The autoinvest on Bondster runs every two hours, so don’t be surprised if you check your account after 30 minutes and your funds aren’t invested yet.

Personally, I don’t mind allocating more to collateralized loans by ACEMA manually if I have some uninvested cash, as those are some of my favorites on the platform. I’m willing to have up to 20% of my Bondster funds in these unique loans backed by Bitcoin.

My Bondster Experience So Far

I’ve only been on the platform for a few weeks, I’m happy with my experience so far. As of February 23rd, several of my loans were paid back already. But that will be part of next month’s update.

However, there is currently one small bug that you should be aware of, so it doesn’t catch you off-guard:

Every once in a while, when accessing the website or the log in page, it switches to Czech language for no apparent reason. In order to switch back to English, you need to click on the Bondster logo to get back to the homepage, change the language and log in again.

The problem seems to be due to their recent redesign and the support already knows about it. So hopefully it will be fixed soon.

• Get 1% cashback on your investments on Bondster within the first 90 days by signing up via my link.

My Income From P2P Lending in January

Platform	Income	IRR	Invested	Value
Mintos	34,80€	11,38%	4.409€	7.004€
Crowdestor	24,78€	8,38%	4.873€	6.100€
Lendermarket	42,70€	14,52%	2.513€	3.396€
Viainvest	30,92€	12,05%	2.737€	3.377€
Iuvo Group	16,12€	11,60%	1.562€	2.733€
Robocash	35,02€	12,14%	3.250€	3.579€
Bondster (new)	0,27€	0,71%	2.000€	2.000€
Bondora Go&Grow	10,04€	6,68%	1.400€	1.816€
EvoEstate	0€	7,21%	214€	300€
EstateGuru	6,56€	7,71%	253€	412€
Mintos I&A	0,01€	9,82%	0€	59€
Total	200,21€		23.211€	30.776€

I earned a total of 200,21€ in interest from P2P lending in January.

According to Portfolio Performance, the free tool I use to track my investments, that’s a return of 0,66% for the month and an internal rate of return of 8,68% p.a. from P2P lending in 2022.

• P2P Lending Bonus & Cashback Offers (February 2022)

Bitcoin & Ethereum

Let’s get to my last and highest-risk investment category, crypto, which I try to limit to 10% of my overall portfolio. In this highly volatile sector, I mostly invest into Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

I’m planning to hold these long-term as well, so short-term moves in price don’t really matter much to me.

Still, January was rough, so let’s see how they did:

• Bitcoin: -15%
• Ethereum: -25%

I remain positive about their performance throughout 2022 as a whole, but let’s see how it goes.

Crypto returns aside, I earned a total of 85,96€ from crypto lending on FTX in January.

• My favorite exchanges to buy crypto

And that’s everything regarding my investments in the first month of the new year. 

What About The TV Interview?

The TV interview I did about frugalism and financial independence will probably air on March 11th. 

But there are some bad news: It seems like I’m not allowed to use any of the video material to do a reaction video, which I find ridiculous. So I’ll think of something else.

How are you guys holding up?

Investing sure hasn’t been easy over the past two months, especially with the latest news regarding Russia and the Ukraine. But this too shall pass…

My Investments in 2022 (January) – The Video

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• My TOP 3 Investments For 2022 (Yearly Returns & Outlook)
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• ETF Investing for Europeans in 2022 (Incl. Broker Tutorials)
• My Top 5 P2P Lending Platforms – Here Is Why
• Viainvest Review – 2 Years Later (12,16%)