November 2020: end of crisis near? Stock markets seem to think so

As you can see below, the stock platforms have more than compensated for the decline in recent months. The increasingly positive reports about the impending vaccines give everyone hope that the crisis is almost over and that everything can get back to normal.

Of course I hope so too, but I expect it will take several months. Once authorized, the vaccines will be available sparsely, and it will take time before most of the population is protected and all measures are no longer necessary. I just hope that everyone can keep it up a little longer and we don’t end up in a third wave. Stay safe!

The European Parliament has voted on legislation for crowdfunding service providers. The good news is that this legislation will go into effect on November 10, 2021. That is later than expected, but in these times I think we can be glad that this has not been stopped.

Platforms are required to place investors’ money in separate accounts with a regulated financial institution, with the account in the investor’s name. In addition, there will be strict rules about how the platform can handle this money.

Furthermore, rules will be introduced to ensure greater transparency and to prevent conflicts of interest. For example, no projects may be posted by people who are involved with or related to that platform.

Of course these rules do not make the crowdfunding market so safe that you cannot lose money, they remain investments with the associated risk. But it will certainly ensure that the market matures and that it becomes more difficult for the ‘cowboys’ among the platforms. Platforms that comply with all the rules are placed in a central European register. When the time comes, it will become clearer which platforms do not comply with all the rules and which you should therefore avoid.

Before we get to the figures, I would like to give a tip for the turn of the year: write down the values of all your accounts on 1 January. This is information you will need for your tax return, at least here in The Netherlands. So it’s worth writing it down on your calendar. But of course you can congratulate everyone first and wish them a happy new year.

Portfolio overview November 2020

Last month my portfolio increased by € 11,120.37 and my average rate of return over all platforms is 9.4%. 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

 Bondora

After an evaluation period of 2 years, Bondora has received an award from the Ministry of Social Affairs: gold level Family Friendly Employer.

As an investor this does not immediately benefit you, but it is of course always good to know whether a company takes good care of its employees.

In the crisis, Bondora had stopped lending in Spain and Finland to focus on the home country of Estonia. They have now started lending in Finland again, so that is a sign that things are going in the right direction again. They do not yet know when they will start providing new loans in Spain. Also nice is that for the ninth month in a row they managed to get back more money for problem loans.

My investments at Bondora returned € 24.97 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

Rental income continues to trickle in at Brickstarter. Not much, it is noticeable that Spain is still suffering a lot from the corona crisis.

My investments at Brickstarter returned € 1.95 last month, and my average return rate is now 2.8%.

 Bulkestate

This month I received exactly as much interest at Bulkestate as last month.

There are a few projects with payment issues, and Bulkestate is in the process of taking legal action. On the other hand, the ‘Blaumaņa 9’ project is going well and is now repaying the loan earlier than planned.

The tricky thing about this platform is that most projects pay both interest and repayment at the end of the term, instead of paying interest every month or quarter. Because of this you actually have no insight into the interim status. So it may well be that borrowers are in trouble, but as long as they do not have to pay yet, that cannot be determined.

My investments at Bulkestate returned € 13.26 last month, and my average return rate is now 3.8%.

 Crowdestate

8 new projects were launched on Crowdestate, bringing the total to 280 (with a total value of 96 million euros). 5 projects have been successfully completed, 156 in total. A quick calculation shows that there are still 124 current projects.

Of these 124 ongoing projects, 27 are in arrears. Fortunately, this is a lot less than two months ago, when there were almost 10 more.

My investments at Crowdestate returned € 43.26 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.4%.

 Crowdestor

Crowdestor has reported that Beetroot Labs has published the game “Dystopia: Contest of Heroes”. The game Dystopia has changed its name a few times, for example you had “Dystopia: Rebel Empires”. Before that the name was “Mafia Stars”, and that’s another project I invested in in 2019. This loan will be repaid in January, and with a game published, I expect there will be enough income to pay off the loan.

My investments at Crowdestor returned € 50.52 last month, and my average return rate is now 16.5%.

 EstateGuru

EstateGuru continues to break their own records, turnover in October was more than 50% higher than in September: 15.2 million euros in loans. Another record is that they have now recorded 1 million investments since it started in 2014.

In other news, EstateGuru has now officially started in Germany. There were a few ‘trial projects’, but on November 5 the first project was started by the new office in Germany.

My investments at EstateGuru returned € 8.45 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.7%.

 EvoEstate

With 20 new projects on EvoEstate it was another productive month for this platform, and 5 of these projects are ‘skin in the game’ projects in which the owners also invest private money.

The large number can be explained by the fact that EvoEstate is a so-called ‘aggregator’ platform: it only publishes projects from other platforms. Of course, that makes it easier for them to publish more projects. Although they do make a selection, they do not just publish all available projects.

19 platforms are affiliated with EvoEstate, including the Dutch Max Crowdfund. The Belgian BeeBonds is now also affiliated. This has been given an EvoEstate rating A-, but the loans are not covered by a mortgage or other collateral. This means that the people behind the lending companies personally vouch for the repayment of the loans, but it is of course the question to what extent that is worth something if something goes wrong.

On November 30th they added the platform ‘inRento’. This ‘buy to let’ platform was set up from EvoEstate because they saw space for a platform such as Brickstarter or Reinvest24. The projects are properties that are bought for rent, and because they wanted to keep EvoEstate as a pure aggregator they created a new platform for this.

My investments at EvoEstate returned € 8.36 last month, and my average return rate is now 2.8%.

 Fast Invest

At Fast Invest there seems to be some movement again. I actually received about 200 euros in interest and payments at the end of this month.

I have withdrawn EUR 215 today to see how this process is going now. Moreover, this platform is still just above my own limit of 5,000 euros, so it would be nice if I could get another platform below this self-chosen limit. There are costs involved per admission (EUR 1.50), and they apply a term of 7 working days. If the payout takes longer, you will receive a fee of 0.01% per day, which equates to an annual “return” of 3.65%. Although that is of course not the way you want to make your money profitable as an investor …

I have heard that there are other investors who receive payments, but that there are also investors who are still waiting. Hopefully it will now start running again for everyone.

My investments at Fast Invest returned € 31.99 last month, and my average return rate is now 11.9%.

 Flender

The amount of late payments at Flender is unchanged from last month, and is only 38 euros of the nearly 3,000 euros invested. Repayments are paid monthly with the interest, and quickly reinvested in new loans. So you quickly have a lot of small investments (with me now 21), which also ensures risk spreading.

My return is somewhat lower than the average return of 9.7%, but that is because I mainly invest in loans from the lower risk classes. Flender offers no guarantees, but only 1.8% of borrowers default. Still, I prefer to stay on the safe side, and a return of just over 7% is of course still fine.

My investments at Flender returned € 15.21 last month, and my average return rate is now 7.3%.

 Funding Circle NL

At Funding Circle NL I now have 5 outstanding investments. One of them is 32 days behind, but I did receive interest and repayments at the beginning of the month. So it’s more of a shifted payment schedule.

My investments at Funding Circle NL returned € 18.80 last month, and my average return rate is now 8.7%.

 Grupeer

Also this month there is no movement in and around Grupeer.

My investments at Grupeer returned € 0.00 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.7%.

 Iuvo

This month my result at Iuvo is negative, but this is purely because I sold a large part of my investments at a discount on the secondary market. After that I was able to immediately withdraw 1,250 euros, and this was quickly transferred to my own bank account. Giving that discount was a conscious choice because this platform was well above my 5h limit and I really wanted to bring it more towards this limit fast, purely for my own feeling.

I would have liked to have sold more loans, but most of it is now in the category “60 days or more overdue”. I do worry about this, because these are all loans from CBC and with this Iuvo is in lawsuit to get the money back. No telling yet whether these funds can be recollected.

My investments at Iuvo returned € -75.47 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.8%.

 Lender & Spender

Since I deposited money with Lender & Spender almost 2 months ago, my interest income has been a bit higher. With more than 4% return, this platform is actually doing quite well: there are 5 other platforms that are still below this in terms of return.

And because Lender & Spender is a Dutch platform and provides loans to Dutch consumers, I think this is a lot less risky investing. There are of course still risks involved, but you do not have to invest far abroad to achieve returns that are a lot better than your savings account.

My investments at Lender & Spender returned € 11.02 last month, and my average return rate is now 4.5%.

 Mintos

This month, just before the campaign ended, I invested in Mintos myself. For this I registered with a new crowdfunding platform: Crowdcube.

From 2,500 you will receive a limited edition debit card as a reward as soon as it is launched. And a sweater. Well, it comes in handy now that it has become so cold ..

The shares cost € 6.12 each and I have invested € 2,503.08. I first wanted to invest the same amount as I had invested in EstateGuru through Seedrs, so 2,333 euros, but from there it was only a small step to 2500 euros. For that amount, I now have 409 Mintos shares.

There was also quite a lot of interest, they aimed for an amount of 1 million euros, but in the end more than 7 million euros was invested by 7018 investors.

My investments at Mintos returned € 51.20 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.4%.

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

 NEO Finance

At NEO Finance my result is negative this month. This seems worse than it is, but I was a little surprised myself. When I checked it, I saw that a considerable amount had been automatically invested (847 euros) and that 36 euros had been charged for the Provision Fund for this. This is more like the insurance for your investment, if you have of course chosen this option. You will then get a somewhat lower return, but this is guaranteed. The only disadvantage is that you have to pay the costs for this Provision Fund in advance, but you will eventually earn it back.

My investments at NEO Finance returned € -19.43 last month, and my average return rate is now -0.5%.

When you register via this link you’ll receive a 1% cashback bonus over all your investments in the first 3 months.

 PeerBerry

The statistics of PeerBerry show very clearly the effect of the corona crisis at the beginning of the year. Fortunately, it is also very clear that the volume of loans granted has returned to the old level:

More than 20 million euros in loans were provided in October, more than 20% higher than in September and more than in the peak of February. PeerBerry has been around for 3 years and now has more than 27,000 investors. PEerBerry originated from the Aventus Group, and the majority of all loans are also provided by Aventus. This group of lenders expects to achieve a net profit of 10 million euros in 2020, so it seems to me that they have no difficulty at all in fulfilling the buyback guarantees should they be necessary.

My investments at PeerBerry returned € 9.21 last month, and my average return rate is now 8.7%.

 Reinvest24

Reinvest24 has finally launched the long-awaited secondary market. A button has now been added to your investments with which you can sell (part of) your investment:

You can then choose how many shares you want to sell and at what price. So you can choose whether you want to give a discount or not:

When investing you can now filter on projects on the secondary market. When you choose a project you will see the prices that are asked for the offered shares:

As you can see, practically all shares are offered at a premium, so for a higher price than the share originally cost. It is not very clear, but if you focus on it for a moment, you will see a graphical representation of the number of shares offered and the price. The normal price of a share is 1 euro. You cannot choose which shares to take over, the cheapest are automatically chosen.

I have tested it, and you immediately see what the costs and expected returns are before confirming the purchase:

I see some really big benefits. Firstly, the shares are currently not offered with significant discounts, but even with premiums. That shows to me that investors, although they now have the opportunity, do not necessarily want to get rid of their investments. So there is a lot of confidence in the platform and the projects, and that is a good sign for the future.

The second advantage is that you can invest on the secondary market from 1 euro. In the primary market, the minimum amount you can invest is 100 euros. Now it is possible to reinvest the income you receive fairly quickly, instead of having to wait until it has risen to 100 euros. This can make your rate of return a lot higher.

And last but not least: it is now a lot easier to sell your investments and get your money out of the platform earlier if you want or need it.

My investments at Reinvest24 returned € 19.28 last month, and my average return rate is now 2.8%.

 Robocash

The Robocash Group made a profit of $ 16.2 million in the first 9 months of this year.

Because of these good results, they have decided to postpone the IPO to the second half of next year to get a better valuation. The IPO and listing on the Australian Securities Exchange was originally scheduled for December.

Until December 10 Robocash has a ‘Christmas cashback’ promotion. If you deposit and invest money no later than December 10, and do not withdraw it before December 24, you will receive a cashback bonus of 1% of the amount you deposited and invested on December 24.

My investments at Robocash returned € 49.43 last month, and my average return rate is now 11.8%.

 TFG Crowd

This month a lot of new projects have been added to TFG Crowd. You can now invest in no less than 14 projects, and 5 new ones have already been announced. Most projects offer 24% interest, and that makes my neck hair stand up a bit. These numbers make me very wary, whether the risk is very high or they want to entice investors to deposit money (for whatever purpose …). But to date, the platform simply remains in the air, despite all kinds of alarm bells that ring here and there. I just do not know.

Today, the platform announced share financing, and is therefore entering the equity crowdfunding market.

The minimum investment amount is 1000 euros, although another announcement mentions a minimum of 500 euros. One of the projects states that you are guaranteed to receive 15% interest / dividend in the first year, and that you can receive up to 88% through dividends.

This also causes an alarm bell to ring in the back of my mind. This is not how equity crowdfunding normally works. You receive shares in exchange for your investment, which are managed for you by the platform. But dividend is not a fixed thing, it is a risky investment where you hope that the value of the company will increase and that you can eventually sell your shares for an additional price. So I don’t understand how they can present this so rosy with dividends and all. For the time being I will stay away from it anyway. Normally I am willing to invest in something new, but not if it sounds so risky and involves such a large amount.

My investments at TFG Crowd returned € 10.69 last month, and my average return rate is now 17.7%.

 TWINO

With almost 40 euros in interest this month, my return at TWINO has slowly risen to 9.7%.

Although TWINO continues to grow, the platform has ‘dropped’ to third place in terms of P2P market share in Europe, due to the rise of the Italian Credimi. Yet they control almost 6% of the market, so you can call them established. Last year they also realized a profit of 4.4 million euros, and that says something.

My investments at TWINO returned € 37.60 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.7%.

 Viainvest

Viainvest is ranked 10th in terms of market share in Europe, out of more than 50 platforms. This platform is part of the VIA SMS Group, and this group published the audited figures for 2019 this month.

Turnover increased by 8% compared to the previous year to almost 28 million euros. The total loan portfolio is just under 24 million euros, an increase of 4%. The most important fact is that a profit has been made: more than 387 thousand euros.

My investments at Viainvest returned € 22.63 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

I have not (yet) made any further investments through CrowdAboutNow. Beer in a Box is my only investment here so far, and for the past month I enjoyed a few nice beers from the beer box that I received as a reward for my investment. Next month I expect another beer package (the Crowd in a Box package in honor of the crowdfunding action), although they have indicated that due to the great success and the pressure they have difficulty sending all packages (PostNL uses a maximum number of packages per company during this busy period). But luckily I still have home-brewed beer so I think I will get through the holidays.

 Crowdcube

This month I registered with a new equity crowdfunding platform: Crowdcube. The crowdfund campaign of Mintos can be found on this platform. This crowdfunding platform is quite large, even bigger than Seedrs. It is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, the English financial authority (similar to the Dutch AFM).

In my update on Mintos you have already been able to read the details of my investment in this platform.

What surprised me was the fact that Crowdcube is so big, even bigger than Seedrs. Founded in 2011, the platform has raised over GBP 1 billion through more than 1,120 campaigns.

In October, Seedrs and Crowdcube announced that they will merge to form one of the largest equity crowdfunding platforms in the world.

 Seedrs

So Seedrs will merge with Crowdcube. They expect this could be completed in early 2021.

Crowdcube will buy the Seedrs shares in exchange for their own shares, with Crowdcube shareholders getting 60% of the resulting company and Seedrs shareholders getting 40%.

Before this merger, both companies have done a due diligence, and the fact that the merger is going ahead does indicate that no surprising or disturbing cases have been found. That does provide some certainty for the future.

My Seedrs portfolio grew by € 111.77 last month, but this is caused by fluctuating exchange rates (Some of my investments are in British Pounds). My average return rate is now 6.6%.

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

What can I say .. The increase in value of my stock market portfolios has more than offset all the declines in value over the past few months. The end of the crisis seems in sight, at least in the eyes of the investors on the stock market and this has pushed all stock prices up. The enormous fluctuations distort the overviews, but on the other hand it is difficult to measure returns and results on the stock market. There are so many different methods, and they all have both positive and negative sides. The fairest approach seems to be “what is my portfolio worth if I can now sell it at current prices” as it best describes the value of both realized and unrealized gains and losses. But that goes hand in hand with these enormous fluctuations.

 BinckBank

Due to positive reports about the effectiveness and imminent availability of vaccines, stock prices have risen sharply, and oil has also risen sharply. Everything is now in green at BinckBank, including the silver ETF that I bought this month. Although the WisdomTree Physical Silver ETF is only at 0.27% gain, the silver price is expected to rise.

My investments at BinckBank returned € 5,243.53 last month, and my average return rate is now 106.7%.

 DEGIRO

DEGIRO is an investment firm, and therefore may not have client money on its balance sheet. Therefore, any money that you have not invested yourself is automatically invested in a money market fund. Here, however, you do suffer from exchange rate fluctuations, which are partly offset by DEGIRO.

This is now changing with the takeover of DEGIRO by Flatex. Investors will now receive a cash account at Flatex bank, which will hold uninvested money. With that personal money account you also get your own IBAN number, but you cannot use this account as a regular account for other banking matters.

The biggest advantage for investors is that this cash account at Flatex Bank is covered by the German deposit guarantee scheme, which means that the money is guaranteed up to an amount of EUR 100,000.

My investments at DEGIRO returned € 5,303.61 last month, and my average return rate is now 57.5%.

 ING

After three months of loss, my portfolio has increased in value again at ING. I have invested here in 2 ETFs, one that follows the price of the AEX stock exchange and one that follows the gold price. It is interesting to note that precious metal and stock market prices quite often move in opposite directions. That is not a fixed fact, and does not always apply, but historically it is generally correct. In the short term, this year, you can kind of see it:

It also shows that investing in ETFs carries less risk in the long term, and that a good spread across different categories is sensible. Because you do not have shares in a single company, there is less risk of it suddenly falling over and your investment collapsing. In the short term it can still go in any direction, but history shows that precious metals and the stock market indices will always come out of a dip in the longer term and break new records.

My investments at ING returned € 128.53 last month, and my average return rate is now 5.2%.

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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