My Investments 10/2022 (Good and BAD News)

Welcome to my latest portfolio update, this time for October 2022.

Let’s have a look at how each of my investments performed.

• ETFs, which seem to be recovering after seeing some pain in September
• P2P lending, where I made several deposits and a few withdrawals
• And my small portion in crypto, which seems to be going down in a straight line this year, especially now that FTX, once one of my favorite exchanges, ran into serious liquidity issues

So yeah, a lot happened. We’ll be discussing all important events up to November 9th.

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

ETFs – On the path to recovery?

Let’s begin with ETFs, making up 60% of my investment portfolio. As you know, these have been hit quite hard this year. Luckily, October was a lot better.

I did some more dip-buying of our main ETF, the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World (ISIN: IE00BK5BQT80) in October using Interactive Brokers.

Here’s how it has been performing:

• +4,15% in October
• -9,79% since the start of 2022

With the mid term elections in the US, I think the market might recover a bit more until the end of the year.

Since we finally got back a big chunk of cash (around 13.500€) from our old apartment and my wife started to get her monthly parental leave payments which we had been waiting for to properly plan our finances, we’ll be adding a lot more to our investments in ETFs and P2P lending over the next two months. So stay tuned for that!

Speaking of that, if you’re looking for the best, low-cost broker in Europe, I recommend checking out Interactive Brokers. That’s what I’ve been using the most this year for my ETF purchases.

Comparing ETFs on IBKR

They also added a useful tool called Global Analyst, which might be interesting to you if you want to quickly compare things like dividend yield or price to earnings for ETFs and stocks:

In case you’re comparing ETFs, just make sure you select Europe as the region, otherwise you might see some US-based ETFs you can’t actually buy as a European investor.

P2P Lending

Alright, let’s have a look at my investments in P2P lending, where I made plenty of changes the month before.

Mintos – Withholding tax reduced to 5%!

• Income (October 2022): 34,79€
• IRR: 10,61%
• Invested since: 27.09.2018

Here we have some excellent news! Withholding taxes for European investors on regulated platforms out of Latvia, like Mintos and Viainvest will be reduced to 5% soon! You just need to confirm your tax residence if you haven’t already and the change should be implemented by the end of November.

• Sign up to Mintos via this link and invest 1.000€ or more before 30.11.2022, to get a €50 instant bonus and a 1% bonus on your average investment in the first 90 days.

Viainvest – New loans from the Philippines

• Income (October 2022): 36,42€
• IRR: 12,35%
• Invested since: 11.10.2019

Since it fits right in, let’s continue with Viainvest, which had a good month as well. Sadly the split between loans and securities in the overview still remains as confusing as ever.

I deposited an additional 300€ to my account on the 1st of November as Viainvest remains one of my favorite platforms, especially now that they pay 13% interest across the board on their loans.

The platform added loans from its Via SMS Group subsidiary Vamo in the Phillipines in October. I adjusted my auto invest to include these as well:

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

Lendermarket – My best month ever?

• Income (October 2022): 80,99€
• IRR: 15,04%
• Invested since: 21.11.2019

Meanwhile, I had my best month ever (by far) on Lendermarket, with 81€ in earnings. I actually had to double check my account statement since I couldn’t believe it:

Since my earnings were basically double my average monthly interest on the platform, I’m pretty sure November will be below average as a result, but that’s perfectly fine.

Lendermarket added another loan originator (QuickCheck) to its platform, but I’ll be sticking to loans from the Creditstar Group.

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

Robocash – Financial results and new loans

• Income (October 2022): 44,79€
• IRR: 12,38%
• Invested since: 19.01.2021

Interestingly, October was also my best month on Robocash so far.

The Robocash Group, offering all the loans on the platform, published its financial results for the first 9 months of 2022 and their numbers are impressive to say the least. Both its loans in Kazakhstan and Spain performed better than expected, so the group generated a record net profit of $43,5 million so far in 2022.

What is more, Robocash introduced a new loan originator from the Philippines (Digido). The lending company is also part of the Robocash Group and its group guarantee, which is why I added it to the first of my three auto invests:

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

Income – First loan originator suspension!

• Income (October 2022): 28,26€
• IRR: 11,56%
• Invested since: 17.03.2022

I deposited another 500€ to Income Marketplace in the end of October.

Remember how I mentioned that Income provides additional investor protections for loans on its platform apart from the standard buyback obligation like a cash flow buffer and junior share?

Well, we now have the first situation where the platform has to prove how well these work. Clickcash, a lending company from Brazil, was recently suspended due to missing payments and Income Marketplace is currently evaluating the best course of action.

According to Income, these loans came with a 159% claim pledge, equal to a junior share of 37%:

I have 292€ in ClickCash loans myself, so I’ll keep you updated on how Income handles this case.

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

Esketit – New LO and more deposits

• Income (October 2022): 32,43€
• IRR: 12,19%
• Invested since: 19.09.2022

Esketit is my newest investment in P2P lending. Here’s why I added them in September.

I deposited an additional 1.500€ to my account last month.

Esketit added loans from Poland to the platform in October. Since these come from within the Creamfinance group, they are also offered with a group guarantee in addition to the buyback obligation.

I’m still using the Diversified investment strategy, as I like to diversify across all of Esketit’s lending companies.

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

Withdrawal in Progress – Iuvo, Crowdestor, Bondster

Last but not least, we have the three platforms I’m currently withdrawing my funds from. Iuvo Group, Crowdestor and Bondster.

Speaking of Bondster, RapiCredit was supposed to fulfill all outstanding buyback obligations by the end of October, but sadly only wired part of the money so far. The rest hopefully being resolved this month.

P2P Lending Income October

Let’s have a look at the monthly total. I tried to simplify the overview so you can see right away which platforms I’m planning to grow and where I’m withdrawing my money right now.

Platform	State	Income	IRR	Value
Mintos	Active	34,79€	10,61%	6.726€
Lendermarket	Active	80,99€	15,04%	3.244€
Viainvest	Active	36,42€	12,35%	4.003€
Robocash	Active	44,79€	12,38%	3.913€
Income	Active	28,26€	11,56%	3.567€
Esketit	Active	32,43€	12,19%	3.533€
Iuvo Group	Leaving	13,91€	11,03%	2.073€
Bondster	Leaving	13,23€	11,69%	1.366€
EvoEstate	Leaving	0€	6,16%	300€
Crowdestor	Leaving	38,72€	7,11%	5.606€
Total		323,54€		34.331€

I earned a record total of 323,54€ from P2P lending in October.

According to Portfolio Performance, which I use to track my investments, my monthly return of 0,93% was above average, raising my internal rate of return from P2P lending to 8,78% this year.

Bitcoin & Ethereum

Let’s finish things off with the most speculative, small portion of my portfolio, namely my crypto holdings in Bitcoin and Ethereum.

October itself wasn’t too bad (but keep reading!):

Bitcoin:

• +4,09% in October
• -50,84% so far in 2022

Ethereum:

• 18,09% in October
• -51,58% so far in 2022

Sadly things have gotten a lot worse since.

The FTX Collapse ft. Sam Bankman-Fried

Last weekend, rumors around the liquidity of FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges (which I also used quite often) started to emerge, causing a bank run with 90% of its customers withdrawing all of their funds within a short amount of time.

That liquidity crunch put FTX in serious financial trouble, as apparently they weren’t simply holding customer assets in custody as stated publicly, but they were actually leveraging them to generate additional revenue via Alameda Research, an affiliated trading firm.

Ever since, news reports surrounding the exchange have gotten worse and worse. The situation reached its climax on Wednesday, when the exchange halted withdrawals and announced a letter of intent by Binance (the largest crypto exchange in the world by far) to buy FTX. Sadly, it took less than 24 hours for Binance to withdraw the offer when they discovered the hole in the balance sheet was several billion dollars larger than anticipated. FTX has since filed for bankruptcy.

I still can’t believe it. This is by far the most surprising thing I’ve seen happen this year…

In its last funding round, the crypto exchange was valued at $32 billion dollars (!) and Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX CEO, was on the cover of Forbes magazine not too long ago as one of the youngest ever self made billionaires. In a way, I also looked up to him.

You also need to understand that crypto exchanges are generally money printing machines, there was zero need to risk it all by leveraging all assets.

As I saw all of this unfold, I also withdrew the cash & crypto I was lending out using the FTX Blockfolio app on Monday and Tuesday. I honestly thought things would most likely be alright, but I wanted to play it safe this time.

I was in complete disbelief when I read that withdrawals had been halted shortly after. I got extremely lucky to get my funds out in time. The only thing that remained on the exchange was a bag of their now useless native FTT exchange token, which has basically been going to zero over the past week.

I’m still in shock. Over the past few days I had been hoping for better news and that a deal with an exchange would go through, to hopefully make retail investors whole again. But that seems extremely unlikely now.

This was another kick in the face not to trust any one person or company, whose financial situation you can’t double check yourself.

Crypto honestly could not have gone any worse this year than all the ridiculous stuff that we’ve seen, from the Terra Luna collapse, to Celsius and now even a massive exchange like FTX imploding. I can’t blame anyone for leaving this space forever after seeing all of this unfold.

Diversification is key

All I can say is thank God for diversification, that crypto is only a small part of our investments and that I mostly focus on other investments (ETFs & P2P lending) on this blog and YouTube channel. I’m still bullish regarding this high risk asset class long-term, but let’s see how long it takes for prices to recover.

So yeah, this monthly update started off really well and positively, but took a sad turn towards the end. Sorry about that. At least ETFs and P2P lending had a great month. Hopefully we’ll see more of that until the end of the year and beyond.

Oh yeah, and my daughter was born in October, so it definitely wasn’t all bad!