My Investments 04/2022 (The Crash Is Getting Worse)

We’re in a really difficult time for investors right now. Most people say they’re long-term investors until they see short-term losses in their portfolio. Then everyone starts losing their mind and wants to get out of their investments as soon as possible.

As of May 13th, that’s the situation we’re in, with several markets in deep correction or crash territory.

So, let’s talk about that, what I’m doing in this situation and let’s have a look at how my investments in P2P lending, ETFs and crypto have been performing.

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

ETFs

What can I say, it’s not looking pretty right now. As of May 13th, my wife and I are once again down more than 10.100€ in value in a single month.

According to Portfolio Performance, our ETFs lost 15.900€ in value since the start of 2022, ouch.

April itself wasn’t quite as bad as what we’re seeing now in May. Here’s how our main ETF performed (in €):

• -2,98% in April
• -6,22% from January 1st – April 30th

Once again, maybe now you understand why I keep saying to treat broad stock market ETFs as a long-term investment, not something to jump in and out of. You should have a time horizon of at least 5 years, ideally 10 years or more.

One day when looking back, most likely all of this fear and noise right now surrounding the stock market won’t matter and you’ll be glad you started investing as early as possible and that you didn’t sell based on emotions you’re feeling in the short-term.

As for how we’re investing, nothing changed, my wife and I are still only buying a single ETF, the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World (ISIN: IE00BK5BQT80, Ticker: VWCE) every month.

I’ve also been trying to buy the dip with some spare cash, as I do think that market crashes like the one we’re currently in represent great buying opportunities.

If you’re looking for the best, low-cost brokers in Europe to get you started on your investment journey into stocks or ETFs, I recommend checking out Interactive Brokers and Degiro.

And if you’re based in Austria or Germany, where taxes are more complicated, make sure you check out my favorite local brokers here. These take care of everything for you, making your life a lot easier.

• ETF Investing for Europeans in 2022 (Incl. Broker Tutorials)

P2P Lending

Let’s move on to P2P lending.

Well, while it may have felt like you were missing out by not going all in on stocks or crypto in 2020 and 2021, this year I’m personally very glad to have this asset class in my investment portfolio as well.

My P2P loans are currently my best performing investments this year.

Here’s my platform allocation on the 1st of May:

So, let’s see how each platform did last month:

Mintos

• Income (April 2022): 38,36€
• IRR: 11,16%
• Invested since: 27.09.2018

As I mentioned previously, I’m withdrawing repayments from Mintos (456,89€ in April) until I see substantial improvements regarding my funds in recovery.

Viainvest

• Income (April 2022): 31,51€
• IRR: 12,04%
• Invested since: 11.10.2019

April was one of my best earning months on Viainvest so far.

The VIA SMS Group, offering all the loans on Viainvest, published its consolidated financial statement for 2021 last month.

The group generated a net profit of 2,24 million euros in 2021, which is great to see for the future of the platform and for the buyback guarantee.

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

Lendermarket

• Income (April 2022): 30,67€
• IRR: 14,42%
• Invested since: 21.11.2019

For the first time ever, Lendermarket added a lending company that isn’t part of the Creditstar Group to the platform.

Credory offers investments in loans to SME in Estonia, collateralized with real estate.

However, these only pay 8-9% interest and have longer durations, making them less attractive to me personally compared to Creditstar, which is currently paying 14-15% per year on short- to medium-term loans.

The Creditstar Group also has a much longer track record, making me feel safer investing in them and trusting their buyback guarantee. But that’s just my personal opinion.

Speaking of the Creditstar Group, they published their income statement for Q1 2022, where they generated a net profit of over 2 million euros.

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

Robocash

• Income (April 2022): 35,63€
• IRR: 12,25%
• Invested since: 19.01.2021

The Robocash Group also published its financial results for Q1 2022. Even with the difficult situation in Russia and Kazakhstan, the Group still managed to generate $1,5 million in net profit in the first quarter.

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

Iuvo Group

• Income (April 2022): 16,90€
• IRR: 11,42%
• Invested since: 05.10.2018

Bondster

• Income (April 2022): 14,64€
• IRR: 10,64%
• Invested since: 25.01.2022

I was happy to see that Bondster took the feedback from my interview with the CEO seriously and fixed the detailed portfolio overview function, which is now working.

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

Income Marketplace

• Income (April 2022): 17,28€
• IRR: 13,17%
• Invested since: 17.03.2022

I deposited an additional 500€ to Income Marketplace in April.

• Get a 1% bonus on all of your investments on Income after 30 days using this link. You can add the referral code: I4IEMZ during signup, but it’s not needed to qualify for the offer, as long as you’re using one of my links.

Crowdestor

• Income (April 2022): 23,68€
• IRR: 8,06%
• Invested since: 03.04.2019

27 out of my remaining 37 loans are still late on Crowdestor. I still can’t recommend this platform based on my experience and I’m withdrawing my free funds on a monthly basis (53,18€ in April).

Bondora Go & Grow

• Income (April 2022): 20,67€
• IRR (incl. withdrawals): 6,69%
• Invested since: 01.09.2018

For whatever reason, Bondora reduced the monthly maximum that can be added to Go & Grow from 1.000€ to only 400€.

I hope they didn’t do this to get more people to use Go & Grow unlimited, which only pays 2% interest compared to Go & Grow’s 6,75% per year (which is what I’m sticking with).

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

My Income From P2P Lending in April

Platform	Income	IRR	Invested	Value
Mintos	38,36€	11,16%	3.492€	6.620€
Crowdestor	23,68€	8,06%	4.782€	6.075€
Lendermarket	30,67€	14,42%	2.513€	3.503€
Viainvest	31,51€	12,04%	2.737€	3.471€
Iuvo Group	16,90€	11,42%	1.562€	2.785€
Robocash	35,63€	12,25%	3.250€	3.684€
Bondster	14,64€	10,64%	2.000€	2.054€
Income	17,28€	13,17%	1.500€	1.539€
Bondora Go&Grow	20,73€	6,69%	3.400€	3.872€
EvoEstate	0€	6,83%	214€	300€
EstateGuru	2,59€	7,78%	145€	198€
Total	231,99€		25.595€	34.101€

I earned a total of 231,99€ from P2P lending in April.

According to Portfolio Performance, the free tool I use to track my investments, that’s a return of 0,69% for the month and an internal rate of return of 8,75% p.a. from P2P lending in 2022.

In the current market situation, it’s nice to see how my investments in P2P lending keep performing while everything else is deep in the red.

Crypto

Speaking of market crashes, let’s have a look at my crypto investments, shall we?

My holdings of Bitcoin and Ethereum are by far my highest risk investments, which is why I try to keep them at a maximum of 10% of my overall portfolio.

The sad reality is, at the moment their performance correlates a lot with tech stocks, which have been getting hammered since the beginning of the year.

Bitcoin:

• -13% in April
• -14% so far in 2022

Ethereum:

• -12% in April
• -21% so far in 2022

Well, things have been getting even worse in May. As a result, Bitcoin is currently down 30% and Ethereum is down 40% since the start of the year.

The Terra Luna & UST Collapse

That’s partly due to the ongoing weakness in the stock market and due to a top 10 cryptocurrency called Luna crashing from 75€ to 0 within less than a week, wiping tens of billions in value off the crypto market and scaring investors in other cryptos as well.

The project’s main selling point was an algorithmic stable coin called UST, which was supposed to be pegged to $1 via its exchange mechanism with the luna token, but wasn’t actually backed by anything else – unlike actual stable coins like USDC or BUSD, which are backed by actual dollars and audited regularly.

When UST lost its peg to the USD, more and more people started losing trust, creating a death spiral in both Luna and UST.

I’m still amazed by how quickly all of this happened and I hope none of you were affected directly.

I also had a bit of Luna in my own portfolio, which I couldn’t access when all of this unfolded. Luckily it was only a very small percentage of my crypto portfolio.

Maybe this makes you understand why I’m hesitant to discuss anything other than the two largest crypto assets Bitcoin and Ethereum in my videos.

With these two, I feel confident they will recover and surpass previous all time highs, even though the sector is clearly in bear market territory right now, so it could take a while.

I’m planning to hold these long-term anyway, as I’m not a short-term trader with any of my investments.

Crypto Lending and Card Cashback (2%)

To finish things off on a more positive note, I earned 64€ from cypto lending via FTX last month.

And up to May 13th, I received a total of $48,46 in CRO cashback using my Ruby Steel crypto.com debit card.

This Too Shall Pass

I really can’t blame you for feeling worried as an investor in the current environment. We’re constantly being bombarded by bad news and it feels like every day is getting worse.

But, as I’ve said before, I’m confident this too shall pass. If you’re a buy and hold investor like me, just stick to your investment strategy and stop looking at your portfolio every day.

As for me, until we’re back to all time highs in the markets, I’m treating the current situation as a discount opportunity, where I’m able to get more shares at a lower price compared to a few months ago.

Either way, thank you for being here and for following me on my investment journey in both good and more difficult periods, like the one we’re in now. I’m grateful for every single one of you.

My Investments in 2022 (April) – The Video

You might enjoy these posts:

• ETF Investing for Europeans in 2022 (Incl. Broker Tutorials)
• My TOP 3 Investments For 2022 (Yearly Returns & Outlook)
• Viainvest – 2 Years Later (12,08%)
• The Stock Market is Crashing – What Now? (ETF Investor)
• Lendermarket – 2 Years Later (14,45%)