Lendermarket Stars series are developed for all of us to learn something new from success stories. In this blog series, we highlight the investment journeys of our investors, as well as financial bloggers and influencers.
For this article, we talked with Angelo, one of the best-known P2P investors, Angelo shares his investing journey with the audience on his youtube channel and blog.
You have large followership on your youtube channel. Tell us a little about how you built that.
I started by publicly sharing my experience investing on different P2P platforms via my blog. It was actually just a way to keep myself accountable and track my own investments. When I started receiving positive feedback, I figured I could easily just publish my blog posts as videos on YouTube as well, to reach more people who were interested in this niche topic.
A few years later, my content has become video-first, as the majority of my audience is subscribed via YouTube.
I guess people like that I’m honest, that I don’t just talk about successful cases but also unsuccessful investments of mine and that I openly share my portfolio in actual numbers (which in my opinion is way more interesting). Maybe my viewers also appreciate that I’ve never done any paid or sponsored content, so whatever I say is my honest, unfiltered opinion.
What were your goals when you started your investment journey?
I wanted to reach financial independence, meaning my goal was to be able to cover our monthly living expenses from our investments alone, indefinitely.
Has your perception of the P2P lending industry changed since then?
After making a few mistakes early on, I’ve become a lot more careful regarding the platforms I use for my P2P investments. Those mistakes also taught me to look at financial statements and to do more due diligence in order to reduce risk.
How has been your investing experience with Lendermarket until now?
My experience on Lendermarket so far has been excellent, after almost 3 years as an investor. The one thing that’s been missing for me is the addition of a secondary market.
A comprehensive overview of Lendermarket made by Angelo can be found here.
What features are a must for you when starting to invest in a new platform?
A solid track record, transparency and open communication with investors being able to see regularly updated financial statements (audited if possible) by the lending companies, interest rates above 10% per year and a reliable auto-invest.
What do you see as the main challenges in P2P lending right now?
I think European P2P lending platforms will have a lot less volume to work with until the energy crisis in Europe is resolved. That’s because investors are currently battling double-digit inflation for their everyday expenses, electricity and heating costs that have multiplied over the past 6 months and have less money left over to invest as a result.
What would your advice be for newbie investors?
Never put all your eggs in one basket. P2P lending shouldn’t be your only investment, try to build a diversified portfolio which also includes other investments like stocks (my preference is a global, low-cost ETF like the Vanguard FTSE All-World) and/or real estate.
Meanwhile, within P2P, I would diversify via a large number of loans from different countries, issued by different lending companies and use more than a single P2P platform.
What is it that keeps you motivated in your investment journey?
Seeing both the size of my portfolio and the cash flow my investments produce increase on a yearly basis. Intrinsically, what motivates me is the freedom my investments provide me with – e.g. knowing that I don’t have to earn any money for xx number of years to sustain my lifestyle so that I can fully enjoy the things that matter the most to me.
Our last guest in this interview series left a question: What kind of investor are you: the one who controls all his P2P investments through all sorts of calculation tables and spends time checking his XIRR every month or the one who trusts the platforms’ dashboards and want his investments to be as passive as possible?
I’m definitely the former. Since the very beginning, I’ve been tracking my exact interest earnings and my internal rate of return for each of my P2P investments via a separate, free tool (portfolio performance).
And last but not least, in order to continue with this chain, leave a question for our next interviewee to answer!
What was your worst investment so far and what did you learn from it?
By the way, feel free to leave a question for our interviewee!
Do you want to start investing in P2P by yourself? Check investing opportunities in Lendermarket.