June 2020 Update – Investment Returns

Hello Everyone! Welcome to my June update where I will discuss my returns for May 2020.

Finally an update that is close to the start of the month!

Another interesting one in relation to the roller coaster of the stock market. It seems as though all of the news contains doom and gloom, yet the market keeps rising! We can talk more about that further down. Let’s get into it!

This month, my P2P and Crowdfunding investment profile returned an average of 0.44%, bringing my total for crowdlending to a return of 4.37% so far this year. This is money that is in the bank (not theoretical returns like shares or XIRR based on future payments). Additionally, my total value increased by 12% from last month (mainly due to the swings in the stock market). The highest of my crowdlending returns came from:

  • Reinvest24 (+7.17%)
  • Bondora (+1.29%)
  • Fast Invest (+0.96%).

Quick Summary

The main items that happened throughout May include:

  • Continued coronavirus effects swinging the total value of my portfolio double digits each month
  • Continued reducitons in p2p and crowdlending payouts
  • Dividend payouts
  • Solar energy payouts

Kuetzal and Envestio Progress

Bankruptcy proceedings have commenced for both Kuetzal and Envesito. You can find the status and progress of each below. Quick summary – Andres Hermet was appointed the trustee in bankrupty for both Kuetzal and Envestio cases. If you have a claim agains either platform, its best to contact Andres at [email protected]

Kuetzal – Company information and Court Proceedings

By a court ruling of 08.06.2020 in civil case no. 2-20-2366 / 57, the debtor, KUETZAL OÜ (registry code: 14519131), was declared bankrupt on 08.06.2020 at 16:00.

Andres Hermet was appointed trustee in bankruptcy (address Harju county, Tallinn, Kesklinna district, Roseni tn 7, phone +3725026408, e-mail [email protected]).

The first general meeting of creditors will take place on 02.07.2020 starting at 14:00 in Hall No. 3012 of the Harju County Court, Tallinn Courthouse.

Creditors are required to notify the trustee in bankruptcy not later than within two months from the date of publication of the bankruptcy notice of all their claims against the debtor that arose before the declaration of bankruptcy, regardless of the basis for the claim and the term of the claim (§ 93 (1) of the Bankruptcy Act). Claims not submitted on time but recognized are satisfied in the last stage (§ 153 (1) 3) of the Bankruptcy Act). Only the trustee in bankruptcy may accept the performance of an obligation owed to the debtor belonging to the bankruptcy estate after the declaration of bankruptcy (§ 37 of the Bankruptcy Act).

https://www.teatmik.ee/en/personlegal/14519131-Kuetzal-O%C3%9C

Envestio – Company information and Court Proceedings

By court order of 03.06.2020 in civil case no. 2-20-3448, the debtor, Envestio SI OÜ (registry code: 14433607), was declared bankrupt on 03.06.2020 at 12:00.

Andres Hermet was appointed bankruptcy trustee (address Roseni 7, 10111 Tallinn, phone +3725026408, e-mail [email protected]).

The first general meeting of creditors will take place on 02.07.2020 at 10:10 in the Tallinn courthouse of Harju County Court at Lubja 4, Tallinn 10115, hall no. 3012.

Creditors are required to notify the trustee in bankruptcy not later than within two months from the date of publication of the bankruptcy notice of all their claims against the debtor that arose before the declaration of bankruptcy, regardless of the basis for the claim and the term of the claim (§ 93 (1) of the Bankruptcy Act).

https://www.teatmik.ee/en/personlegal/14433607-Envestio-SI-O%C3%9C

Progress on Internal Changes

In a recent update, I made a pledge to update sections of my blog. I will keep this section here until these tasks are fully complete. The remaining tasks are>

  • Placing stronger disclaimers within each platform review page saying how my interests lie within the article, including showing my investment graphs and overall asset allocation.
    (Note: currently, there are already disclaimers on all of the pages, however, I will look to have them as more of a focus) .
  • Adding a section to each platform review with my own due diligence.
  • Adding a page outlining some basic steps for how due diligence can be performed.

Overall Asset Allocation

Here I provide a “big picture” showing how crowdlending fits in with my overall asset allocation.

[visualizer id=”36018″]

[visualizer id=”35423″]

This month my allocations have changed a fair bit, but this is due to the negative returns of my share portfolio. I now have approx 75% in shares, 9.5% in cash and 14.5% in crowdlending. Within crowdlending, I have more than half of my investments in Crowdestor.

Overall it’s a net gain again this month of 12% of my total portfolio (due to the wild market swings). Hopefully, I can reach 15% by the end of the year!

Progress Towards Financial Freedom

[visualizer id=”36059″]

The above graph is not related to net wealth, but instead my progress towards a set amount of total investments

I have been on the financial freedom path for a while, however, I have not documented my progress until now. Instead of using actual values, I am using percentages (with the goal being 100%). I have an initial conservative plan of 20 years and have provided a guide as to my current progress.

Once the mortgage is fully paid off in 8 years, I expect to really hit the accelerator on my investments, and hence the progress. This graph will change regularly with new information and calculations etc. You can also see my longer-term graph (i.e. the next 20 years) back on my main returns page.

Why are we focusing on the mortgage rather than FI? That’s another article for another day!

P2P and Crowdlending

My Returns in Crowdlending this month

This month saw my P2P and Crowdfunding profile return on average 0.44% These low returns are still a result of the COVID. We could be seeing more results like these for a while.

[visualizer id=”36017″]

Quick P2P News

Here is a quick one-liner on some interesting things that were happening around the place (in May):

  • LendingClub in America saw a 48 million net loss and laid off 30% of staff just recently.
  • Grupeer is putting together an action plan for the repayment of investments.
  • Bankrupty proceedings have commenced for Kuetzal and Envestio.
  • Mintos expects to receive their E-money licence in the next few months.
  • Each Solar Cell bought for Boland Wind Cellar (through The Sun Exchange) will go in the draw to win a case of wine.
  • Projects through The Sun Exchange are continuing construction with COVID restrictions being lifted in South Africa.

Crowdlending Summary

Returns this month
Returns Since Inception
Time Invested
0.79%
29.64%
2.5 years
1.29%
36.98%
>1.5 years
Grupeer
0.07%
23.60%
>1.5 years
0.66%
40.79%
>4.75 years
0.96%
18.51%
1.5 years
0.04%
14.76%
>1 year
7.17%
10.30%
<1 year

Mintos

Mintos, a.k.a. “old faithful” keeps plodding along doing its thing. Mintos survived the market crash of 2008, so I am pretty happy with my money in there at the moment. They seem to be paying out as expected through the crisis.

Bondora

Bondora is another platform that has been around for a while. I have been invested in Bondora for nearly 3 years now. The returns that I got this month were consistent with my other returns for this year.

I now only handpick loan through the secondary market, but this is time-consuming and there are no buyback guarantees! This way I am taking an active approach in picking quality loans (high rate of return, confirmed borrower, high credit score, payments on time, etc.). I am hoping that this will be more rewarding than automatically investing.

I haven’t picked up any loans this month, as I am waiting for the fallout from the virus. Once I confirm no payment problems from borrowers, I can start to look at allocating money towards loans again.

Grupeer

This month saw some money return into investors accounts (which was said to be an IT issue from March (see Grupeer blog here), however, there has been no news of withdrawals returning any time soon. Additionally, Grupeer has released a crisis overcome plan that announces that an action plan for the repayment of investments will happen in June. You can read the full article here.

On the flip side, the Grupeer Armada legal action group is in full swing. More information can be found here.

RateSetter (Australia)

Rate Setter in Australia was the first P2P platform I invested in. I have recently put my money back to work, which can be seen in the higher returns over the last few months. The downside is that it’s earning much less than the other European platforms. However, the upside is higher regulation and trust within the platform.

Fast Invest

Fast Invest keeps producing consistent returns, which is good to see, however the platform is quite pushy in leaving your money in the platform. When you start the withdrawal process (I say that as it takes 2 weeks), you get met with a screen telling you the importance of investing and keeping your money in place. This popup will take you away from the withdrawal request if you click on it. The platform does offer remuneration for over-pending payouts (aka. interest while you wait for the withdrawal).

Due to all of the withdrawals, Fast Invest has bumped up their returns to a max of 18%.

Crowdestor

Crowdestor is still my favorite P2P platform to invest in at the moment. There is just so much to like!! This month saw only a few small returns, but that was expected due to the crisis. I have also been extremely happy with the high level of communication between Janis Timma (the CEO of Crowdestor) and the investors. We get a lot of information about all of the projects and the current scenario at Crowdestor. The investors were also involved in making a decision on the way forward with obtaining payments from the borrowers.

In a couple of weeks, Crowdestor will run the fourth tier of their equity campaign. This campaign will fund platform expansion, and will allow investors to take part in the success of Crowdestor.

Since I have started investing with Crowdestor, I have earnt on average over 1% p/month. Read more as to the platform’s offerings in my Crowdestor review.

Reinvest24

The moment has finally come! Its the moment that I have been talking about for the last few months. This month, the apartment through Reinvest24 was sold! As can be seen, I recieved a return of 7% through the platform this month.

The actual return of the apartment was over 14%

All of the proceeds of the sale went straight into another project through the platform – Modern office in the business center of Tallinn. This project offers a rental yield of 7.14% as well as a capital appreciation of 7%. In total it’s estimated to grow at over 14% a year. A video overview of the project can be found below:

The Sun Exchange

A few months ago, I purchased some solar cells from The Sun Exchange (if you use the affiliate link, then you will get a bonus solar cell on your first purchase!). The Sun Exchange is the world’s peer-to-peer solar cell micro-leasing platform.

The platform works by people purchasing solar cells, which are then leased to companies (such as schools, nursing homes, shopping malls etc), who will pay for the electricity that is generated by your cells. The companies generally can’t afford the outright cost of the systems themselves, which is where the crowdfunding aspect comes in. The solar system will be split up into many smaller cells, that are sold at a reasonable price. Solar cells can be bought in either BTC or the local currency (ZAR). I will write a more detailed article about the platform in the future, so look out for that!

This update is a little behind, but my solar cells leased out to Groote Schuur High School officially went live on 17th April! Additionally, in the month of April, my cells were able to generate 45 kWh of energy.

Since then, I have bought cells for:

  • uShaka Shopping Mall (IRR 12.41%)
    uShaka Mall is of one of KwaZulu-Natal’s largest retail properties of around 8,700sqm. The mall is 95% occupied and includes a strong mix of stable tenants
  • Boland Wine Cellar (IRR 12.48%)
    Boland Wine Cellar (founded in 1941) is an internationally-recognised, award-winning wine producer

My total energy generated is currently at 85 kWh, which is enough to fully charge two Nissan Leaf Electric Cars.

For some comparison, with 1 kWh you can, toast 160 slices of bread. So in that regard, I have generated enough power to toast 13.600 slices of bread.

Share Portfolio

A few months ago I set up an automatic share purchase system, where I automatically pick up 4 index funds, and one investment fund each month. This is a real set and forget strategy that works well. As they say, its not about timing the market, but instead, time in the market.

Last month I received dividends from FootLocker (FL), and XACT Högutdelande (high dividend, low volatility fund in Sweden). I also purchased more Wells Fargo & Co (WFC).

Journey to 1 free Bitcoin

My journey is still an ongoing work in progress. Playing games, making Coin.

I have decided that I am going to make 1 Bitcoin without doing any “real work”. This means possibly watching an advertisement here or there, playing games that payout cryptocurrency, use the Brave Browser instead of Google Chrome, and invest current cryptocurrency for investment returns. Here is my progress:

Crypto Idle Miner

Crytpo Idle Miner is a game that provides real cryptocurrency (HORA Tokens) as a reward. Each month the number of my HORA tokens increases, but the value decreases. I now have over 150,000 of these things! Once the developers start to incorporate the tokens more throughout the game, and potentially other games, then I will start seeing the real value. Let’s sit back and watch! You can find my Crypto Idle Miner review here

RollerCoin

I haven’t been so active with my Rollercoin account, but the value of the satoshi (i.e. BTC) keeps accruing! This game is addictive as it’s easy to reach the top 5% of players (if you have the time). Check out my RollerCoin review article if you are interested in learning more. Each new player using the specific link receives 200 satoshi for free!

New updates in the game mean that you can now earn ETH and DOGE as well as BTC!

Coinbase Earn

There are now more options to earn cryptocurrency through Coinbase Earn! I have now maxed out my allowance of $130 USD worth of free cryptocurrency. If you haven’t checked it out you should do that already! You can earn some coins simply by watching videos.

Orchid and Tezos now available on Coinbase Earn
Earning $58 through the new modules on Coinbase Earn

Here is how it works
You watch some short videos through Coinbase, on how various cryptocurrencies work. From this, I have earned some Ethereum (ETH), Stellar Lumens (XLM), EOS (EOS), Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), and Dai (DAI). I wrote an in-depth article that you can find here.

Brave Browser

I have been using the Brave Browser for the last couple of months. Find out here why I changed to a more secure and rewarding browser. Basically, you get paid to watch advertisements (if you choose to). It allows users to earn a bit of cryptocurrency and allows advertisers to promote materials to a more select crowd.

Money Savings 

This month we had to say goodbye to one of our chickens. It turns out that 2 of the 4 chickens we bought last month were roosters. These guys (only at 7 weeks old) were starting to fight all the time over the other 2 hens. We ended up finding a good home, so we are happy. Now we are on the lookout for 2 new additional hens!

With so much work, and not a lot of time to be on Twitter, but here are some of my recent tweets:

Socials and Traffic

Things seem to have remained steady this month

  • My twitter followers fell a few this last month. Hovering close to 600
  • My website sessions increased 25% which is a bit surprising. Onward and upward 🙂

You read it all the way through to the end (or you just skipped half of it)! Regardless, thanks for checking out my update this month!
I do encourage you to comment below, and sign up for my newsletter. The newsletter comes out once a month and includes this update and any other articles published during the month.

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