We are happy to present the newest Lendermarket Starts article. This time we talk with Philippe Kässinger, one of the first investing bloggers in Germany. Let’s learn something new from the experienced investor’s story.
Lendermarket Stars blog series are interviews with Lendermarket investors, financial bloggers, and influencers. Here we talk about Lendermarket investors’ experiences, learned lessons, and different investment philosophies.
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?
After my computer science studies, I started working as a Product Manager in the IT industry. Now I am a Product Owner with a focus on Business and Location Intelligence. Besides that I started my blog investdiv.eu in and Instagram channel “investdiversified” as a side hustle a few years ago. Initially, I started the blog because, while I am passionate about all kinds of investment opportunities, back then you couldn’t really find German resources about P2P and Crowdlending. As I already had some experience with it and was keen to try out blogging, I created the blog,
where I share my experience with P2P and other assets and try to encourage the readers to take action and start their investment journey. Everybody has some fear before they start investing – it’s natural. By sharing my story and interesting insight into the industry, I hope to alleviate some of that fear and turn it into curiosity.
What made you deposit in Lendermarket at first, and what keeps you here as a constant investor?
I’m always trying out new platforms and Lendermarket was one of them. I actually started investing pretty early on the platform, in February of 2020. Offering Creditstar loans with higher interest rates than on other platforms caught me and that’s of course one of the reasons I’m still invested in Lendermarket and have pumped up my investments slightly.
Do you recommend others to invest in P2P?
Recommendations are dangerous, especially as a blogger/influencer! What I do is tell my audience about the pros and cons of P2P and talk about my mistakes so they won’t do the same if they decide to invest in P2P. Sure, some mistakes everyone has to make eventually, but by me sharing mine hopefully the mistakes of others won’t be too expensive.
Do you consider yourself an active or passive investor?
I’m an active investor as my main focus is stocks. For example, I am invested in dividend stocks and also do some options trading, both of which are very involved at times. And also in P2P, I have a lot of platforms in my portfolio which have to be managed somehow.
If you could give any advice to someone starting investing with Lendermarket, what would it be?
As long as there are cashback campaigns, use them to make your initial investment. Besides that, don’t jump directly on every newly added loan originator (give them time), set up an auto-invest and diversify over countries and in the beginning just invest 10€ per loan. If you are unsure about a loan originator, it’s also always a good idea to do some background research on them.
What changes do you expect in the P2P lending market in the next 5 years?
I think due to regulation we’ll see lower interest rates in general and some platforms will shift the focus to institutional investors. But of course, not all platforms will be regulated and so there still might be opportunities for private investors.
What are some of the recent trends in the investment world (or more specific P2P) that investors should keep an eye out for?
We have a lot of economic challenges due to COVID-19, and the Russian-Ukraine war resulting in supply chain issues and high inflation. So it’s not easy for everyday investors to make profits. Investors should keep an eye on the inflation in Europe. On the good side, the last years with all the challenges have shown which P2P platforms are reliable because they have a flexible business model to deal with such events.
What’s the best way to reach FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) in your opinion?
Spend less, earn more! It’s easier said than done, but if you set your goal and work on it bit by bit, then you will find ways to start saving. And of course, invest the money you don’t need and build up a cash flow which is increasing day by day.
Jesús from TodoCrowdlending was our last guest in this interview series and left a question for you: I am always curious to know this from a fellow investor… What was your biggest mistake investing (and what did you learn from it)?
It’s an easy question but the answer is not that easy to give. I make mistakes every day, with a focus on investments, the biggest mistake is probably to make investments influenced by emotions. The result is often not that positive. So ideally I make investment choices based on data and logic and leave the emotions at home.
And last but not least, in order to continue with this chain, leave a question for our next interviewee to answer!
My question would be: “What do you think about holding cash nowadays?“.