Portfolio Summary 2024

Welcome to the new formula for the annual investment portfolio summary (and more). Living from day to day, it is impossible to see how much has changed in the portfolio from the perspective of the whole year. I’d like to use this form to refer to the monthly diary I keep, this time with a one-year interval. It is also not without excursions into personal life, or even parts of the portfolio that have never been presented on the blog.

Let’s take a look at the investments of 2024, which were good choices and which turned out to be flops, and my expectations for the new year 2025.

I invite you to read.

Quarter I

The quarter was full of new additions to the portfolio. It was joined by the Esketit* and Peerberry*. platforms. One a relatively new platform, the other with an established market position.

Quarter II

From my private life I made my first trip to America, Costa Rica to be exact. I joined friends who had been toasting our place in San Jose for some time. 😀

And now something about a branch of the portfolio that I rarely or never mention on the blog. In April, I managed to buy an investment apartment for rent.

This is not the first investment property. The previous one was purchased in 2021 and is already working its way up. The search for a new investment apartment lasted more than a year. The profile of the property sought was quite different from the previous one. I wanted a long-term lease, in a large city, the square footage and layout with the possibility of subdividing into smaller units.

I managed to find one, sold by a woman moving to Italy. Despite the middleman involved in the purchase, after more than half a year, I can say that it was a really good price.

Let me know whether you are also interested in this part of your investment portfolio, i.e. real estate.

Quarter III

First ever trip to the US, the reason was a business conference in Miami. I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t squeeze as much as I can out of this trip, extending it by an additional 2 weeks. All the while traveling and working remotely. A visit to the Kenedy Space Center will certainly be remembered for a long time.

The property, which was purchased in Q2, was finally taken into ownership. The arduous renovation process has begun. It is expected to last until the first quarter of 2025.

I have expanded my p2p portfolio with the Income* platform. It joined the risky part of the portfolio (but also the most profitable).

This quarter I made an important decision to shift a large portion of funds to a p2p portfolio. This resulted in doubling the size of investments by the end of the year.

Quarter IV

For my next vacation trip, I chose America for the second time. I wanted to get away from Asia for a bit, and after Costa Rica, the Latin American region proved to be very attractive culturally, and easy to explore (among other things, through one language). It fell on a trip to Colombia. Despite not being able to complete the entire plan (Colombia is big), I count the trip itself as very successful. Colombia turned out to be much safer, and the people were open, despite visiting heavily touristy places (there wasn’t even time for others).

At the end of the year, I added one more p2p platform to the portfolio, Debitum*. It added to the regulated and asset-backed portions of the portfolio.

November closed with a record return, during the month I received more than 800 euros of revenue from the p2p part.

Performance in 2024

Disappointments? Surprises?

Expectations in 2024 for Bitfinex were high. A year ago, the platform was able to crank out months of 17% annual returns; in 2024, it couldn’t get above 5%. For this reason, I am glad I made the decisions to reduce this part of the portfolio by more than 60%.

Similarly, in the ruble part of Mintos, according to the information on the platform, I expected to close this part of the portfolio. I was even prepared to take a partial loss on this account. The deal announced by Mintos to sell the loans, unfortunately, did not materialize. It was eventually scrapped by the platform. In October, Mintos announced that it was negotiating terms for a debt sale with a new company. I am still waiting for more information.

On the complete other side of the pole is the euro part of Mintos*. As I write this post at the end of December, I know that performance for December will be a record. We are expecting a return of over 23% y/y.And all this is due to the cashback campaign, which I wrote about in November. Anyway, the campaign is still available, I personally limited investments in the campaign to the level of 8k euros.

PeerBerry* surprised me with its lack of available loans. I had already heard good things about this platform, but the lack of available loans cooled my enthusiasm. Fortunately, I was eventually able to find a way to keep the cash from lying fallow.

Mixed feelings are aroused by Income*. The platform is cranking out record results despite long delays in repayments. However, the redemption procedure, occurring several times over the past month, does not make me optimistic. It indicates poor vetting of borrowers and their creditworthiness, for which ultimately someone has to bear the cost.

Debitum* a very good start, plus the absence of any delays. However, it is difficult to predict the stability of the platform based on the last 3 months.

It is worth noting that the returns on the rest of the platforms are understated by the sizable deposits that have occurred in the last two quarters.

Plans for 2025

Going back to the end of 2023, it was impossible to predict that so many new platforms would appear in my portfolio. The reason I mention this is that I feel naïve to plan stocks a year ahead if experience shows that it hasn’t worked out before.

However, if I were to, for the current moment, set the actions for 2025:

1. I will stabilize list of platforms in the portfolio, I no longer feel the need to diversify the portfolio. It is possible that there will be the idea of swapping some platforms for others, but not adding new ones.
2. I plan to increase the regulated and asset-backed portions of my portfolio. I plan to do this based on the Debitum platform and an additional custom strategy in Mintos.
3. I am considering in 2025 to conduct a test of withdrawals of large amounts from each p2p platform. The goal is to verify the timing of withdrawals in moments of crisis, that is, when we need cash already in the account.

Let’s go ahead and try to sway what direction the p2p market will take:

1. Deepening loan supply problems – Money is extremely cheap. Unless there is a major collapse in the economy, it will keep coming. And that means even more cash outages on the platforms.
2. Reduce high returns on platforms, especially on those where it is exceptionally high (such as some Mintos lenders).

What are your results for 2024? Predictions in 2025? Write in the comments 👇

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(*) I play open cards. Links marked with an asterisk are affiliate links. If you use them, I will receive a commission. It won’t cost you anything, and often you will get a bonus too – More information can be found on the pages under the specific links.