My Investments 07/2022 (The Market Is Back!)

As you can see based on the new background in my last two videos, we finally finished moving into our new apartment!

There’s still some work to do and I have to find the best place to film my videos from, but thanks to the extra space, we’re definitely a lot better prepared to have our first kid in two months.

That being said, you’re most likely here to hear me talk about investing, so let’s not waste any more time and talk about how each of my investments did in July: P2P lending, stocks in the form of ETFs and crypto.

We’ll also talk about any important events up to August 17th, 2022.

I can say this much already – performance-wise, July was an amazing month. The last time we’ve seen returns this high was in November 2020.

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 start with the largest chunk of my investment portfolio, ETFs.

Finally, after several months of pain in the stock market, there are some good news.

Earnings across the board came in higher than expected in major indexes like the S&P 500. As a result, the stock market has been rallying.

Our own ETF portfolio gained 13.800€ in value in July alone:

And our main ETF, the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World, had the best monthly returns since November 2020, erasing the majority of its losses this year:

• +8,8% in July
• -5,0% since the start of 2022

So kudos to you if you stuck with your investment strategy or if you bought the dip over the past couple of months, you probably made some nice returns!

Either way, ETFs are a long-term investment, but I’m sure it still feels a lot better not to see your brokerage account deep in the red.

• 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.

P2P Lending

Ok, let’s move on to peer to peer lending, the second largest position in my portfolio:

P2P has been outperforming all of my other investments this year so far. It will be interesting to see if my ETFs manage to catch up. I doubt it, but let’s see.

Still, as is most often the case in life, it wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns here either.

Mintos

• Income (July 2022): 29,80€
• IRR: 10,84%
• Invested since: 27.09.2018

On Mintos, my income was higher than last month which is good to see, but still relatively low compared to how much money is on the platform.

That’s because 47% of my remaining funds are in recovery.

However, you should know that I used to have over 10.500€ on Mintos back in August 2020, when a few loan originators started running into financial trouble due to the pandemic. I withdrew several thousand euros since then.

So based on that initial amount, the recoveries make up about 27%, not 47%. That obviously is still too much money that’s not earning interest right now, but I just wanted to clarify that.

Pending Payments Restructured (ID Finance & Creditstar)

Now, there were two things that probably surprised quite a few investors on Mintos holding loans from Creditstar and ID Finance.

Mintos announced a restructuring deal regarding the pending payments from both loan originators, where both pay a substantially increased interest rate and Creditstar paid an additional 1% bonus, with a commitment to pay back everything in full, at the higher interest rate, by the end of the year.

Both of them continue to make payments to Mintos on a regular basis, with Creditstar transferring 1,09 million and ID Finance transferring 466.000€ last week.

Now, here’s why this was a surprise:

Both Creditstar and ID Finance are experienced, profitable lending companies.

In fact, ID Finance Spain just announced their results for the first half of 2022, where they generated a net profit of 5 million euros.

And Creditstar also generated over 4,2 million euros in net profit over the first six months of the year.

So clearly, neither of the two lending companies is having issues with profitability or loans not performing as expected, it seems to be more of a cashflow issue.

My guess is that both of them funded a large number of loans at the beginning of the year and were then surprised by the sudden economic decline after Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, with investors getting fearful and substantially reducing their investments in P2P.

And, since most of Creditstar’s and ID Finance’s money is tied up in loans they already issued, they’re now buying themselves some time to fully pay back investors.

Lendermarket

• Income (July 2022): 41,10€
• IRR: 14,42%
• Invested since: 21.11.2019

Speaking of Creditstar, let’s move on to Lendermarket, which again had an excellent month as far as interest income is concerned.

Even though I’m only investing into Creditstar loans, there have been no issues with pending payments or buybacks of late loans here.

Still, I wanted to know more in light of the Mintos situation, so I reached out to Lendermarket about Creditstar.

Here’s the response:

We would like to reassure all of our investors that the pending payment issue that Creditstar faced on Mintos did not have any negative effect on Lendermarket’s loan offerings issued by Creditstar. It’s been confirmed to us that Mintos has reached an agreement with Creditstar and the issue has already been resolved.

Creditstar has been relying on the historical performance of its P2P funding while planning the next growth phase. However, the unexpected decline of investments in P2P after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came as a surprise, and together with the general investor confidence decline, Creditstar struggled to find alternative sources to fund loans that they had credit lines issued for already.

Although Creditstar’s usual funding activities – bonds and P2P – keep growing, the predicted growth has been slower than the decline of funding on the Mintos platform. Nonetheless, Creditstar’s portfolios are performing well and default levels are at an all-time low. Creditstar also had a successful bond issue of 24 million Euros at the beginning of June, where over 75% of the subscribers opted for the longer period of the 36-month bond tranche, which shows confidence in the company’s long-term success.

To wrap up, we can say with certainty that the positive impact for Lendermarket investors is that we’ll see Creditstar’s interest rates staying actively high for at least 3-6 months so we’d encourage those who are in a position to do so, take advantage of it.

Lendermarket’s response regarding Creditstar

I’m not gonna lie, I was shocked at first when I read the restructuring announcement on Mintos, but after learning more about the situation I feel a lot more relaxed about it.

Another reason why I’m personally not worried is that Creditstar published its financial statements for 2021, which were audited by KPMG. The Creditstar Group has remained profitable for over 8 years in a row, with a net profit of 5,4 million euros in 2021.

And according to its interim report which I mentioned in the Mintos section, the current year is going similarly well.

Still, here’s what I’m going to do with my own account:

For now, I decided to withdraw about 500€ over the next few days, to get the platform back to a 10% allocation in my P2P portfolio. My account has grown a lot over the past few years and I feel like that’s the right level of exposure for me right now. Once the situation on Mintos is fully resolved, I’ll most likely increase my funds again.

Viainvest – Asset Backed Securities Explained

• Income (July 2022): 48,80€
• IRR: 12,41%
• Invested since: 11.10.2019

July was my second best month ever on Viainvest.

The platform fully completed its transition to asset backed securities in the beginning of August.

You can now only invest into asset backed securities on Viainvest, with a minimum investment of 50€ for each. However, each asset backed security already contains a bundle of individual loans, providing a bit more diversification within each investment.

Due to the regulation, your funds are now held in segregated accounts, separately from Viainvest. Investors are now also protected up to 20.000€ by the investor compensation scheme.

However, you should understand that this does not cover the risk of loans not performing or Viainvest not buying back delayed loans, but simply protects you and your assets in case Viainvest as a platform were to go bankrupt and you wouldn’t be able to access your funds.

The buyback obligation for loans that are more than 60 days late still remains, just like interest payments on delayed loans as well.

Due to the regulation, like Mintos, Viainvest also had to introduce a withholding tax of 20% on the interest that you earn from asset backed securities.

However, you can lower this to 10% by submitting your tax residency certificate, which you should do right away. Mine already got approved.

Also, you should know that you’re simply pre-paying some taxes on this source of income this way, as you can count these paid withholding taxes against your taxable income in your yearly tax returns.

So at the end of the day, you’re earning the same in interest, you’re simply losing out a bit of compound interest as you’re paying a portion of taxes early.

Sadly Viainvest removed the option to sell loans early after an investment of 120 days or more.

However, each asset backed security now comes with a fixed maturity date, meaning it can’t be extended after its due date, unlike credit lines in the past. So if you want to invest your money for a shorter period of time, make sure you choose the right loan duration.

The interface on the platform is still a bit buggy since the transition, but my auto invest already invested into several asset backed securities so far in August:

My Viainvest Autoinvest Settings (Updated!)

I only invest into loans with a buyback obligation, with a maximum of 100€ for each asset backed security, a maximum loan term of 365 days and I selected all available loan originators.

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

Robocash

• Income (July 2022): 39,01€
• IRR: 12,33%
• Invested since: 19.01.2021

July was my best month so far on Robocash.

The Robocash Group, offering all the loans on the platform, published its financial results for the first half of the year. It generated a net profit of $13,9 million, which is great to see.

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

Iuvo Group

• Income (July 2022): 16,91€
• IRR: 11,21%
• Invested since: 05.10.2018

Bondster

• Income (July 2022): 7,23€
• IRR: 10,16%
• Invested since: 25.01.2022

Income Marketplace

• Income (July 2022): 9,75€
• IRR: 9,37%
• Invested since: 17.03.2022

Income Marketplace had a relatively weak month as far as earnings are concerned.

That’s most likely because at the start of August, the large majority of my loans here were late, even though I’m spread out across almost all lending companies on the platform.

That being said, I’ve had no issues with buyback and Income does pay interest on the entire delay period as well, so combined with Income’s extra security features I don’t see a reason for concern right now.

Still, the earnings, especially when compared to Lendermarket, Viainvest and Robocash have been pretty low so far, based on my invested amount. But let’s see in a few months.

I added an additional 1.000€ to my account in the beginning of July.

• 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 (July 2022): 13,62€
• IRR: 7,65%
• Invested since: 03.04.2019

Bondora Go & Grow

• Income (July 2022): 4,63€
• IRR (incl. withdrawals): 6,68%
• Invested since: 01.09.2018

I also earned less than usual on Bondora Go & Grow, because I withdrew 2.900€ from my account. I needed the money for some work we had to do in our new apartment.

As usual, the money was back on my bank account within a few hours – no complaints there!

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

My Income From P2P Lending in July

Platform	Income	IRR	Invested	Value
Mintos	29,80€	10,84%	3.353€	6.131€
Lendermarket	41,10€	14,42%	2.513€	3.623€
Viainvest	48,80€	12,41%	2.737€	3.600€
Robocash	39,01€	12,33%	3.250€	3.797€
Iuvo Group	16,91€	11,21%	1.562€	2.836€
Bondster	7,23€	10,16%	2.000€	2.102€
Income	9,75€	9,37%	2.500€	2.575€
Bondora Go&Grow	4,63€	6,68%	500€	1.019€
EvoEstate	0€	6,48%	214€	300€
Crowdestor	13,62€	7,65%	4.734€	6.069€
Total	210,85€		23.363€	32.052€

I earned a total of 210,85€ from P2P lending in July.

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 8,51% p.a. from P2P lending in 2022.

Bitcoin & Ethereum

Alright, that’s it for P2P, let’s get to the most speculative 10% of my portfolio, Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Finally, as the the stock market rally came back, crypto also saw some green in July!

Bitcoin:

• +16% in July
• -46% so far in 2022

Ethereum:

• +56% in July
• -51% so far in 2022

So while things are looking a lot better, we still have quite a bit to recover to get back to previous all-time highs.

In line with crypto prices increasing, I also earned a record 164€ from crypto lending on FTX:

And that’s it for my investments in July!

You might enjoy these articles:

• The Best ETFs 2022
• ETF Investing for Europeans in 2022 (Incl. Broker Tutorials)
• Viainvest – 3 Years Later
• The Stock Market is Crashing – What Now? (ETF Investor)
• Lendermarket – 32 Months Later