December 2019 Update – Investment Returns

My returns for November 2019
My returns for November 2019. Bars show the percentage of each platform in my portfolio (blue for last month, orange for this month), green marks show this month’s return (in %) from the platform.

Welcome to my December 2019 update! Let’s look back over November to see how my portfolio went.

My P2P and Crowdfunding investment profile returned an average of  0.90%. The highest of these returns came from:

  • Wisefund (+1.59%)
  • Kuetzal (+1.58%)
  • Monethera (+1.50%).

Quick Summary

The main items that happened this month include:

  • New review article: Wisefund Platform
  • An investment in an action/horror movie
  • My exciting Black Friday purchases

Other Exciting News

Before I get into my portfolio, I just wanted to thank everyone who comes and checks out my monthly updates!! Next year (2020) I am going to put the website through a makeover to freshen it up a bit.

I have purchased a new theme, which will allow me to speed up the site and update the layout. This will include changes to the homepage, menu structure, and returns pages. I will also include some more useful information (such as XIRR) for my investments. Additionally, I will aim to get more articles out (~3-4 a month) each month.

P2P and Crowdlending

This month saw my profile grow on average by 0.90%, which is a little less than my average for the previous months. This month I didn’t see any out of the ordinary returns.

  • Since the start of this year, my P2P and Crowdlending portfolio has returned 11.23%
  • Since the beginning of tracking my portfolio, I have been able to make 16.68%.

My Returns This Month – Passive Income 

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This graph shows how my returns have compiled since the start of this year. Both interest rate and size in my portfolio are taken into consideration here.

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My current crowdlending portfolio distribution.

Quick P2P News

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

  • Kuetzal changed its CEO. It’s now been more than 2 weeks without any explanation.
  • Wisefund has asked that no one deposit funds for the last 3 weeks for the integration of automated deposit processing.
  • China is forcing P2P platforms to become small loan providers within 2 years, forcing the majority of fraudulent platforms out (article).
  • Mintos was named the Alternative Finance Platform of The Year 2019 and has received the People’s Choice Award for the fourth year in a row.
  • A bunch of platforms updated their user agreements and terms of service (Grupeer, Kuetzal, Mintos).
  • The Crowdestor system was upgraded.

My Results

Let’s start with my poorest performing crowdfunding returns. These are the 3 platforms that takes up ~15% of my portfolio and have so far returned a less than expected return.

Crowd Estate

This month I got €0 returns from the platform. Absolutely nothing came into my account.

I have already pointed out that the Baltic Forest OÜ project payments are suspended, so nothing is expected from them until mid-2020. The Tammelehe 4 project obviously hasn’t gone through yet, with the following notification from the platform: The preparation of the transaction has been delayed due to various technical and legal issues. That pretty much sums up my feelings about this platform.
One other project, Kreutzwaldi 59c is expected to payout its total sum at the end of the month. Regardless of whether that happens or not, I am not looking to invest any more money into Crowd Estate.

Rate Setter (Australia)

The reason that this is performing so badly, is that most of my funds within the platform are not on the market earning a return. I keep holding off, as the best rate I could possibly achieve at the moment is 7.9%. In the new year, I will be re-evaluating where I want to keep this platform in the mix.

Reinvest24

Unlike the above two platforms, this one I am still hopeful for!
I have only invested in two projects, and only one of those pays dividends from rental income (the other is a capital gain through renovation and sales). I am still waiting patiently for that email saying that the apartment has been sold. It will come, it’s just a matter of when! There is also word that another property will be launched mid-December.

Now let’s look at the platforms that are adding some solid value to my crowdlending portfolio. In the month just gone, I have invested in quite a few projects including:

Envestio

  • Spare parts wholesale company financing-part 4 (11 months, 18.5%)
    Financing of a refurbishment of a Latvian hostel.
  • Financing of a refurbishment of a hostel– Mezaparks, Riga (12 months, 19%)
    Financing of working capital for a company spare parts for heavy machinery used in agriculture.

CrowdEstor

This month I invested in both a game (Mafia Stars) and a move (WarHunt). It doesn’t get more exciting than that! Both projects offer a “success bonus”, which is an additional payment if a set hurdle is reached. More information for WarHutd should be posted on the Warhunt IMDB soon…

  • Mafia Stars (Round 2) (12 months, 18% + 14% success bonus)
    Additional financing for User Acquisition campaigns following the global launch of the mobile strategy game “Mafia Stars”.
  • WarHunt (18 months, 18%p/a + success 12% bonus)
    Equity investment in an American Action/Horror WWII movie directed by Mauro Borrelli.
  • Old Town – Kaleju 57 (12 months, 19%)
    Development funding for the reconstruction of Kaleju Apartments in the old town of Riga.
  • Consumer Loan Portfolio Acquisition (12 months, 24%)
    Purchase of a loan portfolio for an established debt collection agency.

No new loans were bought from KuetzalMonethera, Wisefund, Crowd Estate or Reinvest 24.

Other crowdlending platforms such as MintosFast InvestGrupeerRate Setter, and Bondora kept churning away.

Agrikaab

There isn’t so much to report here from Agrikaab this month. The pond is only 1 month old, and I don’t think profits are expected for a little while yet. The pond keeps filling!

If you want to see the reasons that I invested in rainwater in Africa, you can have a look at my article  here.

Scared you missed out? There is a new Rainwater Project that has just started to take orders. Make sure you get in if you’re interested. Help Somalia to harvest rainwater and fight droughts!

Share Portfolio

Nothing new to report. No buys or sells. Just waiting patiently on the sidelines until an opportunity presents itself.

Journey to 1 free Bitcoin

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. Soon I will have close to 100,000 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

Rollercoin had their token sale for Roller Tokens end at the start of this month. I did use some of the money earnt from Coinbase Earn to purchase some of the tokens (albeit a small amount) so that I could access the premium membership. I haven’t been so active with the 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.

Coinbase Earn

I have now maxed out my allowance of $130 USD worth of free cryptocurrency gained through Coinbase Earn. A big thank you to everyone that used my links! Hopefully, you were able to get your free cryptocurrency!

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 concurrency, and allows advertisers to promote materials to a more select crowd.

Money Savings 

This month encompassed the biggest sale of the year – BLACK FRIDAY. Each year there have been crazy sales to start off the Christmas shopping period. This year was no different, with Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) to bring in an expected 15 billion dollars in the US.

As I have earnt a little bit of profit from the website, I thought I would purchase a few things to help with the website and its maintenance. This year I picked up:

  • a new theme (however I am not telling you which one), that will speed up the website, and allow me to remove unnecessary plugins.
  • pCloud storage software. pCloud is the only cloud storage software that offers a lifetime subscription. I was able to pick up 2TB at 75% off! Now all of my website files can be securely stored online and accessed from anywhere. No need for those external hard drives any more!
  • some investments. Yes, I was able to pick up some investments at a discount due to Black Friday (but more on that to come in the new year).

Both of the product purchases were a “single life purchase”, meaning that I don’t have to keep sending money out of my account each month. By using both of the products for more than 4 years will earn back the cost of buying them.

My hydroponic setup is still alive! Hooray! However, they are still looking a little sad. This month I purchased a new shelf and will set up a new system in the new year. This time I will not try and cram everything into the one bucket, but instead, set it up properly. This means that I will purchase another grow light, and something to oxygenate the water with.

My new Jora JK270 composter

Earlier this month I picked up a second hand Joraform JK270 composter, which I am really excited about. For those who don’t know about the Jora (I assume that’s most of you reading!), I will fill you in on a bit of information. This composter has been hailed as the easiest and most efficient composter ever made! The Jora composter is a Swedish designed “warm compost” meaning that it can produce compost even during winter. The 50mm insulation means that the waste can reach temperatures of 70 degrees Celcius. You can compost almost anything, and the design makes it super easy to mix the compost. The estimated capacity is up to 30 L a week. These things retail new for around $450 US, and I was able to get mine second hand for equitant of $50 US – that’s more than an 85% discount!
I can’t wait to start putting it in use!

Before it gets too late in the year, I am also going to get some garlic into our vegetable patch. Hopefully it’s not too late!! They say its good to get in before Winter. Any recommendations?

Socials and Traffic

A few things have slowed down this month, as I haven’t been so active with content over the last few weeks.

  • My twitter followers have increased from 460 to 481 this month.
  • My website sessions have decreased again this month, probably also due to fewer articles.

Summary

Here is the summary of how my investments turned out this month:

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Thanks again 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.

3 thoughts on “December 2019 Update – Investment Returns”

  1. Hi Matt
    Congrats on a very good month. I like your diversified P2P/Crowdlending portfolio which makes very strong progress month by month. With regard to stocks here the same, we remain at the sideline (have not bought since October except dividend reinvestments) and will take opportunity when prices get more attractive (and history shows, that they eventually will).
    Keep up your great work and all the best!
    Cheers
    Financial Shaper

    Reply
    • Hi Financial Shaper,
      Thanks for stopping by!
      I really think this will be the year that we can pick up some good value.
      If I am wrong, the worst case is we save more money for when it does pull back!
      Matt

      Reply
      • Hi Matt
        Absolutely agree. I‘ll keep investing into P2P platforms and when I see attractively priced quality stocks, I’ll pick them up. And either way, building our cash pile will be useful, as we are also planning to acquire some real estate objects.
        2020 will be awesome!
        Cheers
        F.S.

        Reply

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