My Investments 03/2023 (Which One Is Performing Best?)

It’s time we take a look at what happened in the financial markets last month.

With some of the largest banking failures since the 2008 financial crisis, March was definitely eventful.

As usual, today I’ll show you how each of my investments (ETFs, P2P lending and my speculative bets) performed and we’ll discuss any important events up to April 11th, 2023.

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 ETFs, the largest part of my portfolio, where my wife and I have about 202.500€ invested right now:

March was quite rough. On March 3rd, we were up 9.000€ for the year, only to have those gains evaporate just ten days later, as the banking crisis was unfolding. Luckily, we saw a strong rebound by the end of the month, with our ETFs being up 7.600€ in value in 2023.

Our main ETF, the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World (ISIN: IE00BK5BQT80, VWCE) still managed to finish the month up +0,61%, for a performance of +5,1% in Q1.

Either way, we’re sticking to our simple 1-ETF investment strategy.

We simply buy the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World every single month, which enables us to invest into over 3.700 publicly listed companies from all across the world, without placing bets on any one sector or country.

In case you missed it, I published a detailed post comparing 6 different ETF portfolios, from extremely simple to more complex a few weeks ago – make sure you check it out if you haven’t already.

Interest on Cash Deposits

We’ve now received our third monthly interest payment on Trade Republic on our cash reserves, which we moved there in January (as I announced in my review):

Yes, 2% p.a. isn’t much when looking at inflation, but I’d argue it’s a lot better than what banks offer right now, while also being secured by a deposit guarantee of up to 100.000€.

It’s still nice to finally be able to earn a bit of interest on money that’s not meant for investments.

P2P Lending

Ok, let’s move on to my investments in P2P lending, where I earned a total of 336,57€ in interest in March, making this one of my best earning months so far.

Mintos

• Income (March 2023): 62,84€
• IRR: 10,39%
• Invested since: 27.09.2018

With over 62€, March was my highest earning month on Mintos in two years.

The marketplace grouped restructured pending payments and overdue payments together in the overdue section.

• Sign up to Mintos via this link and invest 1.000€ or more before 31.05.2023, to get a €50 instant bonus and 1% cashback on your average investment in the first 90 days.

Esketit

• Income (March 2023): 54,85€
• IRR: 13,79%
• Invested since: 19.09.2022

Next up is Esketit, where I had my best month so far. I also deposited an extra 350€ to my account in the beginning of March.

The AvaFin Group formerly known as CreamFinance published its audited consolidated results for 2022, during which it generated an impressive net profit of 8,3 million euros and increased its equity ratio to 28%.

That’s great to see and makes me confident in the group being able to honor its buyback obligation when needed.

• Get a 0,5% bonus on all of your investments on Esketit within the first 90 days via my link.

Viainvest

• Income (March 2023): 37,36€
• IRR: 12,25%
• Invested since: 11.10.2019

Meanwhile I deposited 500€ to Viainvest as well in mid March.

The VIA SMS Group, the group of lending companies offering all the loans on the platform, published its audited financial statements for 2021, something I had been waiting for for a long time and its unaudited results for 2022.

While the group generated a net loss in 2021 (-2.508.393€), it returned to profitability in 2022 (+2.178.898€).

Viainvest also announced that they’re planning to introduce automated investment strategies to the platform. But if I had to guess, this will most likely still take time, they’re usually not the fastest when it comes to implementing new features.

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

Robocash

• Income (March 2023): 42,40€
• IRR: 12,37%
• Invested since: 19.01.2021

Robocash had a good month with no surprises.

Income

• Income (March 2023): 40,81€
• IRR: 12,64%
• Invested since: 17.03.2022

Income Marketplace had a great month as well, pushing my internal rate of return up higher.

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

Lande

• Income (March 2023): 37,33€
• IRR: 14,97% (incl. 1% investment bonus)
• Invested since: 19.09.2022

March was my best month so far on Lande, as two of my loans were fully repaid on time. Furthermore, Lande entered the Romanian market, so we will see more and more agricultural asset-backed loans from Romania as well in addition to the other two countries Lande is currently active in (Latvia and Lithuania).

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

Withdrawal in Progress: Lendermarket, Iuvo, Crowdestor, Bondster

I’m still continuing my withdrawals from Lendermarket for the time being.

P2P Lending Income March

Platform	State	Income	IRR	Value
Mintos	Active	62,84€	10,39%	8.633€
Viainvest	Active	37,36€	12,25%	4.927€
Robocash	Active	42,40€	12,37%	4.445€
Esketit	Active	54,85€	13,79%	5.536€
Income	Active	40,81€	12,64%	3.761€
Lande	Active	37,33€	14,97%	2.632€
Lendermarket	Leaving	55,91€	15,87%	1.847€
Iuvo Group	Leaving	1,56€	10,80%	894€
Bondster	Leaving	3,26€	12,50%	819€
EvoEstate	Leaving	0€	5,79%	300€
Crowdestor	Leaving	0,25€	6,11%	4.489€
Total		336,57€		38.283€

I earned a total of 336,57€ from P2P lending in March.

According to Portfolio Performance, the free tool I use to track my investments, that’s a monthly return of 0,89% which translates to an internal rate of return of 10,7% from P2P lending this year.

Crypto

This brings me to my two speculative investments in Bitcoin and Ethereum, which performed way better than expected in light of the current banking crisis.

• Bitcoin: +19% (+70% YTD)
• Ethereum: +10% (+50% YTD)

As it stands today, these two are by far my best performing investments this year. Then again, they also crashed massively in 2022 and are still way off their all-time highs, so let’s wait and see how the rest of the year goes.

Either way, I try to limit them to 10% of my portfolio, since they carry the most risk out of all of my investments.

Personal news

As for more personal news, my current goal is to publish one video per week on YouTube.

Sadly, I’m still struggling with that as I never know how much time and attention my now almost 6-month old daughter is going to need on a daily basis.

And to be honest, I wouldn’t trade my limited time with her for anything else, which also means my videos often take me a few days longer than initially planned. I hope you understand.

While it can definitely be exhausting at times, I love being a dad. It’s my favorite job by far.

I couldn’t be more grateful that my wife and I started saving and investing over 6 years ago, after first discovering the financial independence movement and that we can now feel a lot more relaxed about our finances.

Which in turn means we get to spend more time together as a family, so that we don’t miss any part of our daughter growing up – something that is happening way too quickly anyway!

Who knows, if everything goes well, we might actually be able to retire early in a couple of years.

That being said, I’ll most likely still be creating videos at that point, since I really enjoy talking about personal finance and investing and I love interacting with you guys.

What is your best performing investment so far in 2023?

Thank you for being here, have a relaxing weekend and until next time!