30 nov.
Portfelli ülevaated, Rahatarkus

November 2015 update

November was an interesting month. I attended to Rahafoorum training day that was very fun event, had good speakers and attendees. It was great to see many other bloggers and fellow investors that I have been discussing on-line. I hope there will be other similar seminars or gatherings.

In financial wise November expenses were quite high compared to other months in 2015 due to some unexpected expenses. First time this year the monthly saving rate was lower than the rolling average saving rate. However, I still barley managed to stay in the 50% savings club. I am happy to see that my average expenses for 2015 have been steadily decreasing that was one of my 2015 goals. I will soon write another post about the progress of the 2015 goals.

Passive income

In terms of passive income, November was again a good month, better than October. Both P2P and advertisement increased a little bit. The advertisement increase was probably due to soon arriving Christmas (December will be probably again all time record month). Also, there were two dividend payments from the US market.

My passive income increased by -330.5€ to total of 294.07€. The P2P loan interest income was 213.12€ (+1.28€), advertisement income correspondingly 60.34€ (+4.96€), income from real estate lending sites 20.61€ (-324.01€), dividend income 12.73€. This makes my rolling average passive income rate to expenses 37.17% (+2.39%).

November 2015

Investments

Not much to talk about. Did not make any new investments (only reinvested accrued interests and principal payments). In Bondora I used secondary market to reinvest the money as the auto bidder is turned off and will be most probably never turned on again.

If you wonder why I have not made any new investments – my goal for 2015 investment volume as already achieved. That does not mean I won’t make any new investments in December if I find any good opportunities. I most probably won’t put any new money into p2p (loans nor real estate sites) as I am re balancing  my portfolio (decreasing p2p importance). It will be almost well-balanced enough when many crowdestate projects end in 2016. If I have more time I might write another post about my target asset allocation. Press like if you want to read it 🙂

02 nov.
Rahatarkus

October 2015 update (updated 13:10 2.11.2015)

Passive income

Last month had quite an average passive income compared to previous months (when excluding irregular incomes such as Crowdestate Kesktee project interests and Estonian dividends). Peer to peer lending income has stayed somewhat the same, having small standard deviation. They have not grown much, mostly due to that I have not added any new money for at least 5 months now. Theoretically interest should increase anyway, thanks to compounding effect, but it has not much.

When looking portals separately, then Omaraha interest is growing evidently, but Bondora is fluctuating. I have not investigated it further yet, but my best perfection is that the mean of interest has decreased or there are more overdue loans. I did not analyze other portals as the invested amount there is significantly lower and therefore high standard deviation is expected at the moment due to random variables.

My passive income decreased by -330.5€ to total of 294.07€. The P2P loan interest income was 213.12€ (+1.28€), advertisement income correspondingly 60.34€ (+4.96€), income from real estate lending sites 20.61€ (-324.01€), dividend income 0€ (–12.73€). This makes my rolling average passive income rate to expenses 34.48% (+1.86%).

Passive income October

Investments

  • Firstly, I invested into Crowdestate “Kotzebue 14” project – I like the location. I think they are likely to sell the apartments at that location. 8 of the apartments are reserved already that indicates that there should be at least some interest. For example “Sipelga 3” project was having a hard time to find reservations in the beginning of the project, but now, as the building is almost finished from outside, there are only 24% of the apartments not sold or not booked.
  • I also transferred some money to Omaraha, but as I stopped automatic investments, in Bondora I will transfer all excess money out, unless I find some good (cheap and low risk high interest) opportunities from second market.
  • Bought 2 LHV Bond pieces.
03 okt.
Portfelli ülevaated, Rahatarkus

September 2015 update

Intro

September was quite interesting month as first Crowdestate project finished and interest was paid out. Thanks to this it was a record month of passive income. I also attended to some great events – Pub meeting with fellow investors (there were about 12 other investors, some beginners other experienced investors. We had interesting talks with each other about experiences and opinions related to investing and passive income) and Investly investors night (read more about from Tauri blog and Kristi blog).

Passive income

It was record month thanks to Crowdestate “Kesk tee 17” project. I also got first dividends from NOV$ and EXSA$. Bondora interest income decreased along with income from advertisements. I also decided that starting from October I will not reinvest Bondora principal nor interest anymore. I will take it out from Bondora and invest it into other P2P lending sites. I don’t like Bondora’s new course – they don’t think about small investors and nothing is clear at the moment. For example Omaraha offers a much higher return on investment at the same risk and Mintos loans have lower risk (due to collateral).

My passive income increased by +316.49€ to total of 624.57€. The P2P loan interest income was 211.84€ (-2.58€), advertisement income correspondingly 55.38€ (-11.07€), income from real estate lending sites 344.62€ (+318.04€), dividend income 12.73€. This makes my rolling average passive income rate to expenses 32.62% (+9.61%).

September

Investments

It was somewhat active month in the sense of new investments compared to previous months. I gave out one new loan through Estateguru and bought 2 different dividend stocks from the US market. Also, all interests and principal from Bondora, Omaraha, Mintos, Moneyzen were reinvested.

  • Estateguru “Uue-Kastani Villa” project failed and the money was returned. I used the money to invest into “Niguliste 8” project. The interest is not very high, however the collateral is solid and the lender seems to have a good reputation (according to Google). There were some other projects also available to invest, but they did not seem very attractive and I am limiting my social lending portfolio size at the moment.
  • I bought 11 CAT$, after the price dropped over 10%. The dividend yield should be near 4.7%.
  • I bought also 15 OHI$, after the price dropped to 33$. The dividend yield should be near 6.3%.
01 sept.
Portfelli ülevaated, Rahatarkus

August 2015 update

Passive income

August was almost as good as previous month. Income from advertisements has started to climb again – summer vacations are over. The biggest disappointment was Bondora interest income that has dropped slightly (Moneyzen, Mintos and Estateguru increase has compensated the drop). I don’t know jet why, it might be some coincident, lets see what happens next month, if the income has not increased, I will analyze the situation and try to the cause.

My passive income increased by +0.11€ to total of 306.99€. The P2P loan interest income was 213.72€ (-0.84€), advertisement income correspondingly 66.69€ (+1.02€), income from real estate lending sites 26.58€ (+1.80€), dividend income 0€. This makes my rolling average passive income rate to expenses 23.03% (+3.54%).

chart(7)

Investments

I guess that everybody read about the market correction that happened in August. Before the correction I managed to sell my SPY position and during the correction I bought few foreign dividend stocks/ETF’s through IB. I Also invested in some Estonian real estate loan projects. More about the investments bellow:

  • I wrote a post about opening account at IB and therefore I sold my SPY position (3SPY) at LHV Broker. I earned +105.24€ from the price increase and strong USD
  • I bought 13 EXSA (iShares STOXX Europe 600) stock. Why? The price was attractive and I decided to gain some experience investing in EU markets. I wanted to play safe and decided to buy index etf. The costs are low and first dividend payment should come in September
  • I bought 25 NOV (National Oilwell Varco Inc.) stock. This is a little bit of a gamble as the oil prices can drop more, however, I hope that in the longterm the prices will go higher again. Also the price as attractive and the company has a track record of paying dividends. A first dividend should also come in September
  • I reinvested my Estateguru earnings into “Uue-Kastani Villa” project. I had some money from previous interest payments and one project premature return, so I decided to give a go.
  • I also decided to participate in Crowdestate “Kopli tee 44, Peetri” project. I wondered long before I took the decision. I am a little bit afraid of the market situation in the future, however the location is good and if the project manages to raise the capital without a bank loan, then it is possible to rent out the apartments if the market will go down
25 aug.
Rahatarkus

What will most probably happen next to the stock market?

Yesterday Kristi wrote that there is panic at the stock market, along with massive amount other articles about the correction. As Kristi said that this is probably an emotional reaction to the China market crash. I am more numbers person so I read few articles that were not fully emotional based but analyzed the numbers and statistics. I wanted to share you few findings and pictures I found.

What Usually Happens to Markets After the S&P 500 Drops 5 Percent in a Week?

statsBloomberg published a interesting article where the author analyzed S&P 500 historical price drops and following weeks price movement (look the results below). They found that most of the times (~61% probability) the price will rise in the following weeks.

Is the selloff over?

According to MarketWatch article there is a 0% chance that the selloff is over. There have been 211 corrections in the S&P 500 of 5% or greater since 1927. They stated that once the price goes down more than 5% you end up going down further, more often than not. The mean decline has bee 12.11%. According to this information there is great chance that the market can drop a little more as it down by about 5.8% this week and 7.8% from its record close.

What to do?

Keep calm and stick to your investment plan. If the price will drop more and you have already planned to buy the instrument, then it is a good time to do it a bit earlier. If you have extra cash and you are waiting for the next crash then it is most probably too early to buy larger amounts. Another strategy that I personally like is to buy some when the price is down about 10%, then 15% and so on because it is almost impossible to time the market.

12 aug.
Rahatarkus

Why I opened account at Interactive Brokers

I have said many times before that one of my near future goal is to balance out my portfolio by increasing stock investment volume. For a while I have been looking for a better suited broker company that I can use for buying and holding the instruments. Firstly, I was choosing from different possibilities that LHV is offering and I even opened a LHV Broker account, however, by now I have sold my assets at LHV and opened an account at Interactive Brokers. Why? Continue reading!

Comparison between IB and LHV

NB! I have made some USD to EUR conversions. I also only compare USD stock market related trading fees.

Fee type Interactive B LHV Trader LHV Broker LHV Web
Trading 0.004€ (0.90€ min) 0.018€ (6.25€ min) 0.036€ (13.4€ min) 11€ fix + 0.3%
Monthly 0€ to 8.93€1,2 30€ + 0.025% 0€ 0.05% (1€ min)
MIN Value 0€3 ~4463€ 0€ 0€
Dividend TAX 15% 15% 30% 15%
  • 1 If Average Equity Balance is less than USD 2,000 (~1786€) then the fee is USD 20 (~17.85€) – Monthly Commission
  • 2 Accounts generating commissions less than the minimum as stated below in any given month will be assessed the difference as a monthly activity fee (Activity Fee = Minimum Required Monthly Commission – Actual Monthly Commission)
  • 3 IB states that the minimum to open the account is USD 10,000 however I and some other from Estonia have been able to open account with less than that

Example case

My plan is to buy some index ETF’s (Exchange-Traded Fund) every month. Lets imagine that I will buy 200€ worth of SPY (today 1 share costs about 186€). Then we get following monthly and yearly total fees.

Interactive B LHV Trader LHV Broker LHV Web
Monthly Commission 1€ 6.25€ 13.4€ 11.55€
YEARLY COMMISSION 12€ 75€ 160.8€ 138.66€
Monthly holding Fee 7.93€ >30€ 0€ 1€
Yearly Holding Fee 96.16€ >360€ 0€ 12€
Yearly Total 107.16€ >435€ 160.8€ 150,66€

Decision

As clearly seen from previous example the clear winner is IB. Therefore, I decided to open IB account. The process was very easy and quite fast. The only things I had to provide (besides filling different data forms) my ID card pictures (front and back side) and proof of address (sent my Starman PDF invoice).

I hope this comparison is useful to others also. If you have any questions or comments, please free to post them!

02 aug.
Portfelli ülevaated, Rahatarkus

July 2015 update

Two thirds of our Estonian summer time/months have passed already and it is again time to post my last month’s performance report. Currently I am spending my vacation and I actually like the weather. There are so much windy days and as I am doing kitesurf, I have kited almost every day this week total of 12 hours + 2 hours of cycling.

vlcsnap-2015-08-02-17h49m53s165

Passive income

July was again worse than previous months that were higher thanks to dividend income. Also the income from advertisements have dropped and the culprit is summer time as the people do not spend so much time online.

My passive income decreased by -63.41€ to total of 304.92€. The P2P loan interest income was 214.56€ (+11.68€), advertisement income correspondingly 65.58€ (-8.28€), income from real estate lending sites 24.78€ (+2.49€), dividend income 0€. This makes my rolling average passive income rate to expenses 19.73% (+1.26%).

chart(6)

Investments

Still no new investments. I opened an account at InteractiveBrokers and I plan to add some funds there and buy some US stock or index funds. The transaction and holding costs are much lover than using LHV. I will dive into it after my vacation.

16 juuli
Rahatarkus

2015 half year summary

As promised in my previous post, here is my personal finance summary.

Net worth

What is net worth? From Wikipedia: Net worth is the total assets minus total outside liabilities of an individual or a company. Put another way, net worth is what is owned minus what is owed. In business it is often used in the context of fraudulent law and on the dissolution of the company.

  • During the last 6 months my assets value increased by +16.20%
  • Net Worth increased by +27.13%
  • Liabilities decreased by -1.26%

networth

I am quite satisfied with the results. The projected increase for the whole year seems to be at least as good as it was in the last year. I am hoping it will be even more thanks to larger passive income, however seems that the average monthly income from freelance projects has not been as good as last year (more about this in the next chapter).

Income

My income includes monthly salary, passive income from investments and income from freelance/side projects.

  • My average monthly income has decreased by -1.18%
  • My average monthly passive income has increased by +477% (from on an average 55.6€ to 322€)

chart(3)

Numbers don’t lie. Passive income has increased a lot, however normal income has decreased. It is not from my day job as I got rise at the beginning of the year, and passive income has increased also, so the culprit is income from freelance projects. This is somewhat explainable as there is less work in the spring/summer months and a little bit more in autumn.

Expenses

  • My average monthly expenses have decreased by -24.28%

chart(4)

Not much to say. I am very pleased to see that I have managed to decrease my average expenses that was also one of my goals for 2015.

Investments

  • Portfolio size has increased by +58.89% (through new investments and reinvested income)
  • The ROI of all investments was +7.20% at the time of writing the post. The calculation is made by dividing all asset class net profit by total invested money. This is not by far the best or correct method, however, it is easy and gives at least for me a suitable reference point.

chart(5)

As I have stated before, I am not investing into P2P loans or real estate backed loans or capital, but looking dividend stock bargains (to balance out my portfolio) or accumulating the cash (waiting for the next correction). I will most probably fill my 2015 goal (that is to invest as much capital as previous year), but I will prefer stock or less risky backed loans.

Till the next time! Have a great summer! If you have any thoughts or questions related to this post or topic or want to share your progress, please feel free to comment.

01 juuli
Personal, Portfelli ülevaated, Rahatarkus

June 2015 update

Hi there! Another month has passed and summer warmth has not yet arrived in Estonia. It is time to give my June portfolio update. If someone is not yet noticed, half of the 2015 has passed (too fast!), therefore I plan to soon write another post about my half year goal progress.

What happened in June?

Nothing super interesting happened, but it was good month full of different sport activities. I started to use my bicycle when going to work (on sunny days) and I like it. You can look my progress on the chart below.

chart

We Estonians also had our national holidays called “Jaanipäev” and “Eesti võidupüha” and I personally had almost 5 day mini vacation that included grilling and eating. It is a time when a lot of people drink and eat too much. I managed to avoid the first one entirely and the second one was managed also fairly good. The only regret is that I did not do much sport during that 5 day period only some work in our summer home.

BTW. I had an idea that someone should organize “Finatsvabadus” groups “summer days” event. For example, few hours of chatting and grilling meat in the nature. Maybe someone has a good spot/summer home near Tallinn?

Enough of that, back to numbers!

Passive income

June was again worse than 2 previous months, mostly because lower dividend income, however, this is expected due to the yearly dividend payment policy in the Baltic stock market. When not taking dividends into account, it was still worse than May as the advertisement income has decreased also (people spend less time on-line in summer).

Continue reading

01 juuni
Portfelli ülevaated, Rahatarkus

May 2015 performance update

It is first of June and it is again time to give an overview of previous month performance. Last month was not ordinary as I spent 10 days at Estonian largest military exercise in history called Siil 2015. Money wise it meant that my expenses were little bit lower and income higher as my employer ensured my salary and government paid some money for each day.

Passive Income

May was little bit worse than April as I got “large” amount of dividends last month. However Olympic paid it’s dividends in May so the difference was not very big.

My passive income decreased by -38.04€ to total of 419.66€. The P2P loan interest income was 197.08€ (+12.06€), advertisement income correspondingly 84.07€ (+19.37€), income from real estate lending sites 30.21€ (+7.43€), dividend income 108.3€ (-76.5€). This makes my rolling average passive income rate to expenses 14.82% (+3.12%) that are well on track with my 2015 year 15% goal.

passive2015-5

Investments

This month I opened account in Mintos.lv and transferred some money there. I have received some interests already but I will do my first analyze next month. Overall I like Mintos very much. It has good design, company account opening was easy, finding loans was also easy.

Also first loan in Estateguru was paid fully back and I used this and invested into Pakri project. At the moment there are no problems with Estateguru, all interest payments are paid on time.

There are 2 black sheep. Firstly money in Moneyzen is not going out very fast and I don’t want to lower my interest rates very much. Secondly I don’t see great compounding effect of my money in Bondora. The interest payments are staying almost the same that means that great number of loans are missing their payments or are going bankruptcy. I have not yet decided what actions to take or just wait and see. I have not added money to Bondora for 3 months now and also don’t plan to add any in the near future.