August 2020: stocks still main source of income

This month my update is a day later. Yesterday I went out to dinner after work, we all need to do our bit to help the economy.

The growth of my portfolio is increasingly leaning on the stock market. In the six months since I started there, my (provisional) profit has now risen above 10,000 euros. This is a lot more than I expected; my main goal was to ensure more diversification, instead of just investing through crowdlending and crowdfunding alone.

My P2P income fluctuates a bit, now it is ‘just’ slightly below 400 euro. Of course I am happy with such numbers, but there are still a few platforms that are lagging behind. So I expect this to increase month over month.

Portfolio overview August 2020

Last month my portfolio increased by € 2,701.12 and my average rate of return over all platforms is 8.3%. The table below shows the details for each category.

Passive income per month

You can find my definition of passive income on my portfolio page.

Activities

To show you how little effort is involved when investing via crowdfunding and crowdlending I have added an overview of the manual actions in the last month:

I did check the platforms every now and then, but this was purely for fun. It wasn’t necessary to get these interest payments and return rates.

Crowdlending

This month I got 2 more platforms under my own platform limit of 5000 euros. By imposing this maximum on myself per P2P platform, I force myself to spread my funds more and thus reduce the risks. And it’s an easy rule to check. That limit of 5k is a bit random, a nice round amount, but of course you have to start somewhere.

 Bondora

Bondora has stopped lending outside their home country of Estonia since the start of the crisis. Next month they will determine whether they can start cautiously with loans in Spain and Finland again. This is actually good news, because I recently read that the loans from Estonia are particularly profitable for Bondora. Loans outside of Estonia are loss-making. The article also explains that Bondora is tweaking their statistics to make them look better. I assume this mainly has an impact on investors who do not invest via GO & Grow but do so manually, or via one of the other investment options. It seems to me that the impact on Go & Grow is slightly less because it yields a lower return and Bondora itself gains the yields above that, or takes a loss on it. If loans consistently generate a loss, this will of course affect Bondora’s operating result, and therefore also the payment of the Go & Grow interest. Bondora has indicated that they see no reason to adjust the interest rate of Go & Grow, but it is good to keep checking how this platform is doing.

At the beginning of this month I withdrew 1,000 euros from Bondora, because it was above my own platform limit of 5,000 euros. To my great, and pleasant, surprise it was deposited into my own account that very same day. When I withdraw money at the beginning of the year, it was still paid out in pieces due to the large number of withdrawals. Apparently tranquility has returned and Bondora is back in control at this point.

My investments at Bondora returned € 25.79 last month, and my average return rate is now 6.8%.

When you register through this link you’ll receive a 5 euro bonus. Just give their Go & Grow option a try for a few months, and don’t try the other advanced options.

 Brickstarter

I started at Brickstarter 8 months ago, and I have to say I expected more from this platform. It does make me money, although a return rate of 3% is not really something to write home about. But on the other hand, we are already at home with this Corona so we don’t have to write home either.

On the site you can get an overview per investment that shows per month what the occupancy was, what the rental income was and what the costs are. This is quite detailed. I might have to invest more to get a more consistent income stream here, but I’m still waiting to see how it goes before putting more money into it.

My investments at Brickstarter returned € 6.62 last month, and my average return rate is now 2.9%.

 Bulkestate

I have not received any interest at Bulkestate for three months now. The yield is therefore slowly falling.

There are some investments that don’t pay interest until the end of the term, which isn’t until next year. Aleksandra Apartments should have already paid back, but an attempt is currently being made to sell this property. Bulkestate does provide transparent information about this, it will be a while before it will be refunded.

My investments at Bulkestate returned € 0.00 last month, and my average return rate is now 3.4%.

 Crowdestate

Crowdestate has the changes to include a payment service provider in the platform, and wants to submit the license application after the lockdown restrictions. Being or using a payment provider seems to be one of the requirements in the soon expected European legislation, for example to ensure better protection of investors’ money. Each investor then has its own separate bank account with the payment service provider.

This month, interest income at Crowdestate peaks again, thanks to the Anstangu project. This project does not pay the interest per month but per quarter.

My investments at Crowdestate returned € 102.88 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.3%.

 Crowdestor

A few days ago Crowdestor started a crowdfunding for ‘Crowdestor PAY’. They want to take over a provider of payment services with the amount raised. Several other platforms use a payment service provider such as Lemonway, both to make incoming and outgoing payments and to separate the accounts of investors from those of the platform.

There are 27 payment service providers registered in the Czech Republic, so no idea which Crowdestor wants to take over. I assume it is a small one, otherwise I think it would be too expensive. The biggest advantage of integrating such a provider is a clearer separation between investor funds and the platform. The question, of course, is how big that split is if such a provider is fully integrated into the platform. Separating funds from investors and platform is going to be one of the requirements to be able to comply with the European legislation that is coming up, so I think that’s why they have taken this step.

As an investor you will receive your own IBAN bank account number so that you can transfer money directly to your own account, instead of sending it to the bank account of the platform with your investor number in the description. They are also planning to offer other services such as their own bank cards. There are other platforms that want to offer this, so that you could even switch completely from your own traditional bank and only use the bank account of such a platform. I am not in favor of that at all, it seems far too risky to put “all your eggs in 1 basket”.

My investments at Crowdestor returned € 53.94 last month, and my average return rate is now 17.0%.

 EstateGuru

A few days ago I received my EstateGuru shareholder certificate, so I am now the proud owner of 1 share in EstateGuru. I got this through a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs.

The platform itself continues to run fine, and the return fluctuates around 10%.

My investments at EstateGuru returned € 17.65 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.9%.

 EvoEstate

At EVOEstate it was a busy month in terms of projects. 10 projects became available to invest in, 3 of which are ‘skin in the game’ projects. The owners of EVOEstate also invest in this with their private money, although it is not clear exactly how much.

My investments at EvoEstate returned € 4.31 last month, and my average return rate is now 2.5%.

 Fast Invest

On August 19, I withdrew 50 euros from Fast Invest as a test. I hear a lot of stories about payments that are behind schedule and that can take months. The withdrawal process is simple and quick to go through, but a very clear message is immediately displayed that the withdrawal is scheduled a week later. Nowadays there are also costs involved:

The withdrawal should have taken place on August 28, but on August 30 it was still not processed. However, there was a clear message shown after login and that there is a compensation for the late payment:

Today, September 1, I received an email that the withdrawal had finally been transferred. And it was actually in my bank account. A few days late, which is of course annoying. As a platform you will appear more reliable if you stick to the reported / agreed dates … You could also say that it is still quite fast, because I hear from people that their March and April withdrawals are only now being processed and transferred. Apparently, Fast Invest has now got this under control a little bit more, or more liquidity to resume payouts.

I am still slightly above my 5k limit, so my auto-invest is still turned off. I hope to be able to do another withdrawal soon, and then it will become clearer whether the payouts are consistently (more) on time.

My investments at Fast Invest returned € 0.00 last month, and my average return rate is now 12.5%.

 Flender

Last month was a great month at Flender. My return was slowly climbing and is now above 7% for the first time. Also, I have received the largest amount of interest since I started here almost a year ago.

New loans are regularly available here from smaller Irish companies as this is an all Irish platform. The auto-invest also does a great job. The loans are repaid monthly, so you regularly get invested money back to withdraw or to re-invest.

The dashboard clearly shows how much loans are behind, for me that is almost 40 euros of the more than 2800 euros that I have invested. Those are quite good numbers.

My investments at Flender returned € 26.49 last month, and my average return rate is now 7.2%.

 Funding Circle NL

At the Dutch platform Funding Circle NL, one project was paid off in one go this month, 835 euros plus some interest. The amount I have outstanding here is decreasing considerably, but I do not mind because it is no longer possible to invest here as a private person.

I now have 6 active investments through this platform, 5 of which are on time with payments. 1 project is now 2 months behind, and of the originally invested 500 euros, 292 euros has not yet been repaid. But it’s not like they haven’t made any payments for 2 months. Only in April and May payments were not made, and since June payments have been made monthly again. So this month’s payment was actually the amount that should have been paid two months earlier in June.

My investments at Funding Circle NL returned € 22.76 last month, and my average return rate is now 8.7%.

 Grupeer

Grupeer is still in the air and continues to communicate. They indicate that they are discontinuing all activities and are fully focused on paying back all investors. Still skeptical here, and as the saying goes: seeing is believing.

My investments at Grupeer returned € 0.00 last month, and my average return rate is now 11.0%.

 Iuvo

Yesterday I withdrew my uninvested money from Iuvo. I have waited for a while, because I prefer to withdraw nice round amounts. Yesterday it was above 100 euros and then I withdrew it all. The next day it was already in my own bank account, so that’s neat.

Iuvo is now one of the few platforms that is still above my own limit of 5000 euros, and in recent months I have been trying to keep withdrawing the money that has become available. But this is not going fast. As you can see from the screenshot of my account on my Iuvo page, most of my portfolio is now having payment issues. Only 14% paid on time. All loans come with a buyback guarantee, but that must of course also be fulfilled. As soon as lenders get into trouble, guarantees also become more uncertain.

Some of the loans in arrears have been provided by FastFinance, which offers a buyback guarantee but only after 60 days. It accounts for only 250 euros of my investments, so I am not worried about that. The other part was provided by CBC from Poland, and there are real problems with this. Iuvo has hired a Polish law firm and has taken legal action to recover the money from investors. A very large part of my portfolio, 5,800 euros, is in loans from CBC. Clearly no diversification by the auto-invest has been applied here. It is therefore important to check this yourself regularly, and not blindly rely on the auto-invest. It remains to be seen how long this will take and whether everything will come back.

My investments at Iuvo returned € 12.65 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.9%.

 Lender & Spender

Lender & Spender remains very stable. A low return compared to other platforms, but it is completely Dutch and your money is spread over hundreds of loans:

Of the more than 2,800 euros that I have invested here, less than 40 euros is in loans in arrears. And with a total profit of 267 euros, that is actually hardly noticeable. I think one of the reasons is that these are loans from Dutch consumers, and in terms of stability, we are doing pretty well here.

My investments at Lender & Spender returned € 9.19 last month, and my average return rate is now 4.5%.

 Mintos

At Mintos I had also disabled my auto-invest. Almost a thousand euros has now been released, the next week I will divide that over my Mintos KZT and Mintos RUB accounts. After that my Mintor EUR account is well below my own limit of 5k per platform.

I have decided to use the 5k limit separately for my Mintos Eur, KZT and RUB accounts for the time being. Of course this is all the same platform, but they are mainly different originators. And the Mintos platform itself is so big that I don’t see it failing so quickly. There are dozens of P2P platforms in Europe, but Mintos alone serves over 47% of the entire European market.

With 14% and 16% my KZT and RUB accounts are yielding a bit better than my EUR account, which “only” reaches 11%. If I have transferred the money, my money could therefore be more profitable at Mintos, although exchange rates also play a role. The Ruble and Tenge have fallen in value, which is also clearly visible in the graphs on my Mintos page. The returns in the currency itself are excellent, converted to euros via the daily exchange rate, the returns are negative. This can be clearly seen from, for example, the return of my Mintos KZT account:

On the one hand it is therefore risky to make additional deposits, on the other hand it is now advantageous to buy rubles and tenge. If the prices were to rise again, the return would rise even faster.

Mintos has replaced Invest & Access with 3 investment strategies: Diversified, Conservative and High-yield. Investors who had an Invest & Access account were automatically switched to the balanced middle variant, Diversified. This gives you more choice as an investor, although you can still only withdraw money from loans that are not lagging behind. If a loan lags behind, that money is blocked until the buyback guarantee takes effect. With all three variants, all loans come with a buyback guarantee, you now have more influence on your automatically invested portfolio. You can choose one of the three variants, or divide it over several variants in the ratio you want. This way you make your portfolio more robust and you still have the convenience of automatic investments that you do not have to worry about.

My investments at Mintos returned € -44.54 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.8%.

When you register via this link you’ll receive a 1% cashback bonus over all your investments in the first 90 days.

 NEO Finance

NEO Finance has added a new category of loans: A +. The risk with these loans is even lower than the existing A category, while the interest rates are still close to 10%. The platform is one of the few licensed by the central bank, and you get that feel from the website. With every manual investment you have to confirm a contract, but fortunately for the auto-invest this is a one time action. And that is the most important of course, I prefer “set and forget” investments. At NEOFinance you have your own IBAN account number to which you can transfer money directly.

My investments at NEO Finance returned € 33.36 last month, and my average return rate is now -2.6%.

When you register via this link you’ll receive a 1% cashback bonus over all your investments in the first 3 months. If you also enter the code “ML19” or “Beursbox” during the registration you will receive a welcome bonus of 20 euros as well.

 Reinvest24

Fortunately, my return at Reinvest24 is positive again, due to the paid cashback bonuses. These were paid a few days late, and it was not the amount I expected. When I asked for clarification, I immediately received a response, explaining that one of the projects had been canceled. The cashback bonus was not paid out for this project. It would have been neater if this had been reported before paying the cashback bonus, now it also took a few days before communication about this project was made and the invested amount was refunded. Including the paid investment costs. It is a small platform, so maybe they have a high workload, but it is definitely a learning point for this platform. Hopefully they will learn from it.

This month there was also a new type of project, a business loan for real estate development. However, this also involves the 2% costs, even though the site states that these costs are for the purchase of the rental properties. I also inquired about this, and they state that this is to pay for legal fees and due diligence. After the secondary market has been introduced, the next important development is that with this type of loan the 2% costs are no longer charged, and will be paid by the borrower.

My investments at Reinvest24 returned € 22.02 last month, and my average return rate is now 1.0%.

 Robocash

The Robocash group has published the annual figures for 2017, 2018 and 2019. These have been audited by KPMG. In 2019, 3.5 million loans were provided, which represents an annual growth of 59%. The total loan amount has increased by 65% compared to 2018, to $ 303 million. The turnover of the Robocash group itself amounted to $ 132.1 million last year.

More important, however, is that Robocash has been profitable all these years (more than 15 million profit in 2019), and that the profit is increasing every year. That, and the fact that KPMG has checked the figures, does give confidence in the stability and future of Robocash.

My investments at Robocash returned € 0.00 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.2%.

 TFG Crowd

My investments at TFG Crowd returned € 19.40 last month, and my average return rate is now 17.7%.

 TWINO

At the beginning of the month, I also took out a substantial amount from TWINO, and this platform is now also under my own platform limit of 5000 euros. After 2 days I received an email with the confirmation of the withdrawal, and the following day the entire amount of 1500 euros was already in my own bankaccount. After the withdrawal I enabled my auto-invest again.

My investments at TWINO returned € 46.78 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.6%.

 Viainvest

Viainvest is one of the stable platforms in my portfolio with a return of 12%. Viainvest is part of the VIA SMS Group, and the available loans to invest in are all originated by that group. So they keep everything in their own hands. Providing loans is their core business, and the platform helps them with that. I feel that this provides more stability than a separate small platform that depends on external lenders.

By default, Viainvest sends a summary of your account activity every day, and you will see a little bit of interest being credited most days. A bit of principal is also repaid almost every day, which is positive because that means that by turning off the auto-invest, your money will steadily flow back in case you want to withdraw it. It will then take a while before everything is released again, but it is of course better than money that is completely fixed for a longer period of time.

My investments at Viainvest returned € 23.22 last month, and my average return rate is now 12.0%.

When you register via this link you’ll receive a 10 euro bonus if you invest 50 euro or more.

Crowdfunding

 CrowdAboutNow

The administration and formalities regarding my investment on CrowdAboutNow in Beer in a Box were completed over a week ago. I am now officially co-owner. One of the ‘perks’ of the investment was a Crowd in a Box beer package, and they expect to send that to investors in October. The tasting will be delayed because of the Covid-19 restrictions. The monthly subscription to a beer box starts on October 29. So I can really enjoy my investment soon.

 Seedrs

The investment in EstateGuru has been completed at Seedrs. My portfolio now looks like this:

My investments at Seedrs returned € 114.71 last month, and my average return rate is now 8.1%.

When you want to try Seedrs for yourself, you can register via this link and you’ll receive £25 free investment credit after investing £150 or more within 30 days of signing up to Seedrs (around 175 euros).

Stock

 BinckBank

BinckBank is contributing most of my portfolio growth this month. This is partly due to oil, but ING has also risen sharply.

Aegon will pay a dividend, about 5 cents per share. It total that will amount to a bit more than 40 euros. Sweet.

My investments at BinckBank returned € 1,480.60 last month, and my average return rate is now 179.9%.

 DEGIRO

Flatex has taken over DEGIRO, and soon every investor will have their own Flatex bank account. Now uninvested money is invested in a money fund, because DEGIRO itself is not a bank, and this is accompanied by exchange rate fluctuations. An even bigger advantage is that soon that bank account will fall under the deposit guarantee system, and that the money you have there is guaranteed up to € 100,000.

This month I also got into a new ETF: iShares Digital Security UCITS ETF USD Acc. Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important, especially now that much more work is done from home. Through this ETF you invest directly in multiple companies in this industry, which is more stable than shares of a single company. Although I have to say that my investment in CrowdStrike Holdings is going very well, I bought it at a rate of $ 96 and it shot to $ 143 in a month.

My investments at DEGIRO returned € 739.90 last month, and my average return rate is now 50.5%.

 ING

My return at ING is going well, with a return of almost six percent. Here I invested in 2 ETFs: gold and the AEX. This is for the long term and I don’t have to worry about it.

My investments at ING returned € -16.61 last month, and my average return rate is now 5.8%.

Blog traffic

The number of visitors has increased slightly, and is now just under 2000. I am very happy with this, it is nicely stable. Next month I hope to add some more overviews and information about the platforms, which will hopefully make it even more interesting to visit my blog. Although I also just bought a newer and larger brew kettle, which undoubtedly takes quite a lot of time. Not that I mind of course 🙂

And finally…

That was it for this monthly update. You can subscribe via the contact page and you’ll receive an email the moment a new update is published. Or just visit again next month, that’s up to you.

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Below you can also find the link to my previous posts, where you can find my tips and results of the previous months.