April 2021 Update – Investment Returns

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Hello Everyone! Welcome to my April update, where I will discuss my returns for March 2021.

  • since inception (Nov 2020) my American share portfolio has returned 37.14% against the SPDR S&P 500 ETF which returned 18.2%
  • my P2P and Crowdlending investment profile returned an average of 0.52%, bringing my total for crowdlending to a return of 1.42% for 2021. My highest returns came from Bondora (0.88%) and Crowdestor (0.73%) and Reinvest24 (0.58)
  • my Solar panel system generated 72.932 kWh of energy this month (paid out in BTC), bringing my total energy production to 880 kWh. Total carbon saved – 906 kg
  • my total investment portfolio increased by 0.9% from last month.

Quick Summary

The main items that happened throughout January include:

Overall Asset Allocation

Here I provide a “big picture” of my asset diversification. I also drill down into the differences within my crowdlending portfolio

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This month I withdrew more money from various P2P platforms (Crowdestor and Bondora), to reduce my exposure to those platforms, as well as invest in some more shares.

As per my last updates, I am in the process of reducing my P2P platforms from 7 down to 3. I plan on only having exposure to Mintos (for individual loans), Crowdestor (for business loans) and Reinvest24 (for fractional real estate loans).

Progress Towards Financial Freedom

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The above graph is not net wealth, but instead my progress towards a set goal for my investment portfolio.

This month my account increased just shy of 1%. This was mainly due to a nice little bump in the share price over March.

I’m still smashing my guideline (by over 5%), so hopefully I can reach my goal 4 years early. However, I do understand that markets are going crazy at the moment, and that value of my shares can easily drop 20%. I actually look forward to that day, as it means that I can deploy some of the cash that is stored up. I am in it for the long haul, so I’m not worried.

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. You can also see my longer-term graph (i.e. the next 20 years) back on my main returns page.

Share Portfolio

I seem to still be outperforming the SPDR S&P 500 ETF. Obviously this is early early days, however, my goal is to be able to match the fund, while also being able to generate passive income through dividends.

(Now, my portfolio is not solely based on dividend companies. I do have other growth stocks that don’t pay dividends, however these are in other currencies and exchanges, and not a part of this account shown here. )

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If you are interested to see the breakdown of the investments, please see the chart below. Dividends received last month:

  • BAC

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P2P and Crowdlending

Quick P2P News

Here is a quick one-liner on some interesting things that were happening around in the P2P space in January:

  • The Sun Exchange have successfully funded the biggest crowdsourced finance event EVER on the African continent!
  • Mintos has launched a Community Forum to replace the comments functionality on their blog.
  • Mintos has also updated their risk scores. In total there were 5 upgrades and 1 downgrade.
  • AxiaFunder has a new litigation project to invest in
  • Grupeer has released a new blog post indicating that someone is willing to start paying loans back.
  • If you are affected by the issues with Grupeer, and you are not part of the Grupeer Armada, then there has been a template letter released helping you to contact your embassy to put pressure on the case.

My Returns in Crowdlending this month

This month saw my P2P and Crowdlending profile return on average 0.52%, which is consistent with my lacklustre results so far this year. Assuming that I would only be getting 0.50% per month for the rest of the year, it looks like my total return would be only around 6%. This is a stark contrast to the expected 12%+ that I had received in the previous years.

Unfortunately I do expect higher than a 6% return with my money, so at this stage, I do not plan on having much exposure to the crowdfunding sector, apart from a few select platforms. The specific crowdlending platforms that I will keep in my portfolio specifically include:

At this stage I feel that each of these different platforms bring something different to my portfolio. I feel like its important to have multiple sources of passive income. You will notice in the graph below that I have still kept a few legacy platforms in (as I am in the process of withdrawing my money from them):

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My P2P Investment Platforms – All of the Crowdfunding Graphs have Moved

Each month I seem to be repeating the same graphs with not so much writing. Therefore I have moved my graphs to my portfolio page, where you can see all of the changes as they get updated (rather than waiting for me to release my update.

I can still discuss anything of significance here, but it will be much easier keeping the graphs on the other page.

The only real thing of significance this month is that I am starting to withdraw more and more from Crowdestor. There are a few reasons why (1) Crowdestor is my biggest position, and I don’t want to be overexposed to business loans. (2) Many projects have seen their pay-outs being delayed or not paid back at all and (3) I am not interested in any of the new projects coming up.

The money that I am taking out is waiting to be invested in the share market.

The Sun Exchange – Passive Income from the Sun

The Sun Exchange is the world’s first peer-to-peer solar cell micro-leasing platform (if you use the affiliate link, then you will get 1 free solar cell on your first purchase!). If you are interested in finding our more about the sun exchange, please check out my full platform review.

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This month my cells were able to generate 72.93 kWh of energy (paid out in BTC). There are currently a few projects on offer, namely:

  • Pioneer School for the Blind | 113.10 kW | Worcester, South Africa (IRR 11.58%)
  • SPAR Lulekani | 368.08 kW | Phalaborwa, South Africa (IRR 12.13%)

My total energy generated through The Sun Exchange is currently at 880 kWh, which would allow me to drive 3,267 American miles in a Tesla Model 3 (just need to buy one first).

For some comparison, with 1 kWh you can, toast 160 slices of bread. So in that regard, I have generated enough power to toast 140,800 slices of bread.

AxiaFunder

Recently I invested in litigation funding through AxiaFunder. This is external to other platforms, as the income is not controlled by borrowers ability to pay a loan on time, the currency exchange rate, the markets, or other global health pandemics.

There is currently one project available through the platform:

Software Theft & Copyright Infringement
If the Claim wins at trial, investors are contractually entitled to the greater of a Multiple on Capital (MoC) of 2.8x and an uncapped Return increasing at 66% per annum (33% for each 6 months of part thereof).

AxiaFunder connects investors with carefully pre-vetted commercial litigation opportunities. The platform invests in legal cases where there is a high probability of winning at court, with potential returns of 20%-30% pa. The only downside with litigation funding – returns are not guaranteed, there is a risk of loosing all of the investment if the case fails, and in some very extreme circumstances, could have to pay more than the amount you put in. (every case is insured, but if the insurance company was to default, then the investors would need to fund more of the project).

Projects are few and far between, and usually last for long periods of time >12 months.

Journey to 1 free Bitcoin

My journey is still an ongoing work in progress. Playing games, making Coin. If you want to see what this is about, I encourage you to find out more through my main article – My Journey to One Free Bitcoin

There were no new tokens from the platform this month

Here is how it works
You watch some short videos through Coinbase, on how various cryptocurrencies work. From there you earn various cryptocurrencies as a reward. 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.

Money Savings 

With so much work, and not a lot of time to be on Twitter, so there haven’t any original tweets in a while now!

Progress on Internal Changes

In a past 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:

  • (Priority #1) Adding a page outlining some basic steps for how due diligence can be performed. (started writing this)
  • (Priority #2) Adding a section to each platform review with my own due diligence.
  • (Priority #3) Placing stronger disclaimers within each platform review page saying how my interests lie within the article.
    (Note: currently, there are already disclaimers on all of the pages, however, I will look to have them as more of a focus) .

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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