Even though I rebranded the YouTube channel to my own name just four days ago, as promised, I’m not stopping my regular portfolio updates.
So here we are. We’ve had an extremely bullish month in January, which caught a lot of investors off guard, including me. I certainly won’t complain, I just wasn’t expecting the market to go up this quickly.
Today I’ll show you exactly how each of my investments performed – ETFs, P2P lending and the small part of my portfolio I like to risk on speculative bets.
I’ll do my best to include any important events up to February 12th, 2023 and discuss any changes I made or if I’m planning to make any.
Please don’t forget that none of this is investment advice, just my personal opinion based on my own experience as an investor.
ETFs
After a painful last year, ETFs performed a lot better than expected in January.
I’m of course only referring to low-cost, passive ETFs covering stocks from all over the world. I don’t like to bet on specific sectors or countries.
The one ETF my wife and I buy on a regular basis is the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World (ISIN: IE00BK5BQT80, VWCE) and this strategy hasn’t changed.
We were able to invest more than we originally planned in January, after reviewing how much we actually need to keep in cash reserves for upcoming tax and social insurance payments.
Since our main ETF had monthly returns of 5,43%, or 9.400€ in capital gains, we’re now getting closer and closer to the 200.000€ mark in our ETF portfolio!
I don’t think the entire year is going to be as smooth of a ride upwards for stocks as we still have tons of uncertainties to deal with.
But, that’s exactly why this could be an opportunity to dollar cost average into the market, so to buy shares on regular intervals, no matter if prices are up or down.
That’s what we’re doing as well on a monthly basis.
If you’re looking for the best low-cost broker in Europe to buy stocks or ETFs, I recommend checking out Interactive Brokers.
P2P Lending
As I discussed in my investment strategy for 2023, I’m also planning on increasing my investments in P2P lending this year. I’ve already started doing that in January.
Mintos
- Income (January 2023): 49,59€
- IRR: 10,45%
- Invested since: 27.09.2018
Let’s begin with Mintos, where I had my best earning month since March 2022.
I deposited an additional 660€ to my account in the end of January, in line with my plan to increase my investments in P2P lending.
By the way, since several of you were asking for it – you can see my current auto invest settings on Mintos here.
- Sign up to Mintos via this link and invest 1.000€ or more before 31.03.2023, to get a €50 instant bonus and a 1% bonus on your average investment in the first 90 days.
Viainvest
- Income (January 2023): 41,03€
- IRR: 12,30%
- Invested since: 11.10.2019
Next up is Viainvest, which has been running smoothly as expected. I deposited an additional 230€ in January.
I already have 73% of my funds invested in asset backed securities on the platform, as more and more old loans and credit lines are paid back on a monthly basis.
- Get 1% cashback on your average daily investment balance on Viainvest within the first 90 days via my link
Lendermarket – Why I’m Withdrawing My Funds
- Income (January 2023): 68,62€
- IRR: 15,23%
- Invested since: 21.11.2019
I’m currently withdrawing my money from Lendermarket until the Creditstar Group stops extending loans on the platform (which is why the percentage of late loans is so high) and finishes repaying pending payments to Mintos investors.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re still paying interest consistently month after month and they offer very high interest rates right now, especially if you combine them with the 2% cashback campaign they just published (details here). But in my opinion, these loans currently carry more risk than before due to Creditstar clearly being low on liquidity right now.
Now, do I think Creditstar is at risk of defaulting? Well no, I wouldn’t go that far based on their latest financial statement for Q4 2022.
Still, I think your money could get stuck for a while. Sort of how it is right now, where you receive regular interest payments, but also see lots of loan extensions. So make sure you keep that in mind.
Robocash
- Income (January 2023): 40,84€
- IRR: 12,41%
- Invested since: 19.01.2021
Robocash also performed as expected in January and I added 230€ to my account.
Too bad that they’re lowering interest rates again, with the highest available rate now being 12% per year:
As a result, I sadly also had to lower the minimum interest rate in my auto invest to 10,5%.
I can live with this change as long as they don’t go below 10% for loans with a duration of up to one year.
It’s pretty clear that Robocash is not in need of extra liquidity and that demand for its loans remains very high, probably due to the Robocash Group’s strong financial results.
- Sign up using this link, to get 1% cashback on all of your Robocash investments after 30 days.
Esketit
- Income (January 2023): 59,06€
- IRR: 14,58%
- Invested since: 19.09.2022
I had my best month so far on Esketit and deposited an additional 400€, bringing my account balance to over 5.000€.
- Get a 1% bonus on all of your investments on Esketit within the first 90 days via my link.
Income
- Income (January 2023): 21,67€
- IRR: 11,77%
- Invested since: 17.03.2022
Meanwhile, I had a pretty slow month on Income Marketplace, but luckily February is already looking a lot better.
- Get a 1% bonus on your average investment balance on Income after 30 days using this link.
Lande
- Income (January 2023): 29,56€
- IRR: 15,53%
- Invested since: 19.09.2022
Lande, the platform where I invest into asset-backed loans, had a strong month with almost 30€ in interest payments.
- Get a 1% bonus on all of your investments on Lande within the first 180 days via my link.
Withdrawal in Progress – Iuvo, Crowdestor, Bondster
P2P Lending Income January
| Platform | State | Income | IRR | Value |
| Mintos | Active | 49,59€ | 10,45% | 8.019€ |
| Viainvest | Active | 41,03€ | 12,30% | 4.348€ |
| Robocash | Active | 40,84€ | 12,41% | 4.365€ |
| Esketit | Active | 59,06€ | 14,58% | 5.085€ |
| Income | Active | 21,67€ | 11,77% | 3.671€ |
| Lande | Active | 29,56€ | 15,53% | 2.576€ |
| Lendermarket | Leaving | 68,62€ | 15,51% | 3.036€ |
| Iuvo Group | Leaving | 4,53€ | 10,88% | 1.088€ |
| Bondster | Leaving | 16,30€ | 12,80% | 809€ |
| EvoEstate | Leaving | 0€ | 5,87% | 300€ |
| Crowdestor | Leaving | 0€ | 6,29% | 4.746€ |
| Total | 331,40€ | 38.043€ |
I earned a total of 331,40€ from P2P lending in January.
According to Portfolio Performance, the free tool I use to track my investments, that’s a monthly return of 0,79% which translates to an internal rate of return of 10,21% from P2P lending this year.
Finfellas Riga (P2P Conference 2023)
I actually have some more exciting news to share regarding the P2P lending sector – there’s finally going to be another in-person P2P conference!
This time it’s called Finfellas Riga. It’s taking place on the 1st and 2nd of June in Riga, Latvia.
I’m going, I just booked my tickets! I’ll be in Riga from May 30th – June 3rd, that way I have some extra time to see the city as well.
I had a lot of fun in 2019 when the last P2P conference took place, and I was looking forward to another in-person event, so I can’t wait.
In case you’re interested in going as well, there’s a 20% early bird discount until the end of February, which you can combine with a promo code Finfellas gave me: Angelo-P2P-Finfellas
Make sure you enter it during checkout to get an extra 10% off the ticket price:
Either way, let me know if you’re coming as well or if you’re in Riga around that time, I’d love to finally meet some of you guys in person!
Crypto
So, let’s shift the focus back to investing and finish things off with my speculative basket, which I limit to 10% of my portfolio.
I’m still talking about my investments in the two largest crypto assets, Bitcoin & Ethereum.
The sector remains highly correlated to the stock market. But, since that one has been performing well lately, both digital assets some of their best months in a while.
Bitcoin was up 38% and Ethereum was up 30% in January!
Let’s see how the rest of the year goes!
Interest Earnings on Cash Deposits are back!
I actually forgot to mention this part in the video. As I announced in my review, I moved our cash reserves to Trade Republic last month, to earn 2% interest p.a. without taking on investment risks (euro deposits are guaranteed up to 100.000€ per investor).
As a result, I earned 13,95€ in interest on cash that would otherwise have earned zero on my own bank account:
I can’t remember the last time I received interest on uninvested cash deposits. While that obviously won’t beat inflation, it’s a lot better than nothing!
Anyway, that’s it for the first month of the year!
Let me know if you’re also coming to Riga in June!
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Hi Angelo !
Regarding your comment “euro deposits are guaranteed up to 100.000€ per investor” … My belief is the 100,000€ guarantee is theoretical and therefore there is still a [hopefully small] risk.
This is because the procedure is based on the intervention of a Deposit Guarantee and Resolution Fund to guarantee customer accounts.
However, the amount of equity capital in the Deposit Guarantee Funds is generally unlikely to be sufficient if there were to be a generalised financial crisis (eg, sparked off by a nuclear war).
As an example, take France (for which I recently saw the figures on Droit-Finances.net): the Deposit Guarantee Fund was about 4 billion euros when the article was written, BUT the savings deposits in France totaled about 2,000 billion euros.
So, we need to be careful and consider this risk too.
To do that, we probably need to get the most recent figures ; I had a quick look, but couldn’t find them for Belgium or France. Maybe they are carefully hidden, to make us think we can have confidence in the banks 🤣.
In addition, I see that many banks have also published an internal limit to the total sum of their guarantee !
I’d be interested to read your thoughts on this, or anyone else with good knowledge of the subject. Hopefully, I have missed something – eg, the government happily paying the outstanding amount of the losses 🤣.
The European Central Bank states “If a given national deposit guarantee scheme cannot cover depositor losses in the event of a big bank failure, taxpayers might have to cover the shortfall, which could in turn harm that country’s public finances. The financial crisis showed that banking problems do not stop at national borders.” … And, what the devil do they consider a “big bank failure”?
All the best, Colin
Hey Colin, good to hear from you again!
You’re of course correct, bank deposits aren’t 100% risk free either. One more reason why I don’t like keeping more cash than necessary 😅
AAA-rated government bonds likely offer some extra protection, especially for anything above 100k.
Still, I’d argue the deposit guarantee in Germany is one of the most likely ones to hold up (or be subsidized with public funds or the “money-printer” if needed).
I’d also be interested in digging deeper into all the guarantee schemes. Might actually be worth doing that myself for an upcoming video/post.
Hi Angelo, congrats on your blog! What’s the reason for leaving Iuvo? Thanks!