Update #011 - February 2022

Hello everyone out there, what a crazy month we just had... and probably still have ahead. War in Ukraine, talks of nuclear threats, markets being shaken by catastrophic news, oil prices reaching $100, financial sanctions on Russia, and this is just a summary of it all. I am sort of surprised that after all the bloodshed we saw in the early and mid 90s we are again walking down a very similar road, it's just sad and makes me wonder how smart we are after all. 

Personally February has been nice, freezing cold in emerald island, we even got a glimpse of snow a few days ago. Fortunately though, it is getting warmer by the day. Oh! I finally started going back to the office once or twice per week, so that was something new and interesting. Met colleagues I've been working with for over a year now hahaha. I also seem to be much more productive when working in the office, very interesting observation, on top of that communication is much more fluent with my colleagues when there.

Leaving all the madness aside, or trying at least here goes the financial summary for February 2022!!!

P2P Update

My P2P have shown some concerning slowdown this month, most likely linked to the Ukraine/Russia conflict. The portfolio returned €36.15, the lowest return in about 5 months:

For the first time in 9 months the avg annual yield dropped way below 10% siting at ~9.64%

Scary times coming for my P2P portfolio indeed.

P2P News

If you are a P2P investor you may have received several emails related to the Russian financial sanctions. Some of them carry interesting news:

• Mintos: decided to exclude all Russian and Ukrainian loans from their primary market, and removing the companies from the Mintos strategies. They also paused all RUB (Russian currency) operations. More here.
  
• Sadly... 49% of my loans in Mintos are placed in the Russian Federation so chances are I won't see that money back any time soon. I have stopped the auto reinvesting in Mintos from the time being.
  
• Peerberry: Similarly to Mintos, they have stopped listing Russian and Ukrainian loans, however they claim repayments shouldn't be affected and that they are well capitalized.
• I have 50 loans with the Russian Federation, resulting in about €500, plus about 60 loans in Ukraine (circa €600). Yes... that's about 80% of my portfolio in Peerberry. 
• I have removed all the lending companies from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Moldova from my AutoInvest strategy.
  
• Robocash which is based in Croatia, announced a change in their payment provider from BlueOrange Bank (a Latvian bank) to 3S Money (a Dutch bank). It's not clear why the timing of this aligns with the conflict ... they say is just a bit of a coincidence. They also said the money invested through the Robocash platform is kept in their holdings in Asia and by no way going in or out of Russia, this concern is based on the fact that Zaymer loan originator is essentially based in Russia, however according to Robocash only works on the local market an. 
• I don't have loans in Russia or Ukraine in Robocash, and I have disabled Kazakhstan loan originator. 
• Finbee, last but not least, this is an Estonian based platform and has certainly no Russian links whatsoever and in fact they have started a campaign to collect funds for Ukraine. 
• No changes on this platform for now.
  

P2P platforms seem to have survived covid, and here comes another big test for them. 

It's hard to measure the impact of these measures on my loans as of now.... however at first glance looks like about 25% of my P2P portfolio is affected. I'll see how this evolves the following months.

Dividend Update

A total of €29.70 came in the shape of dividends during February. This is approximately twice the amount received one year ago in February 2021 :) neat!!! The three biggest contributors were Iberdrola (€9.01), Shell (€7.7) and Abbie (€6.30).

Stocks Update

With all this volatility in the markets some stocks experienced turbulence so I pulled the trigger a few times this month. Here are the picks:

• TSM: bought 3 shares of Taiwan Semi Conductor @$121.7, this one dropped quite a bit since then to ~$108. TSM has been growing its dividend at 14% the last 5 years, and their payout ratio is less than 10%!! Great dividend prospect in the making here. Will load more if the price tanks a bit more.
• AD: bought 15 shares of Ahold @€26.6, a bit of a conservative play in the consumer sector. Also solid dividend payer, with a yield of about 3.5% right now.
• MMM: bought 3 more shares of 3M @$148.97, a good dividend payer but not much of a grower nowadays.

These purchases should add about ~€36 euros to the annual cash flow.

Overall passive income

This month passive income reached €65.85, a 68% growth yoy. Not bad :). Unfortunately it didn't make it too far in terms of expenses coverage, reaching 2.55% of the 12 months rolling average. In fairness is trending nicely, haven't dropped below 2% in over 6 months now :) lets step up to 3% now, right?

Monthly objective review

As I "Promised" in my goals for 2020, in order to fight my natural procrastination instinct I decided to track more closely certain monthly objectives. These are minor things I want to hold myself accountable for, here they go!

• How much did I walk? 
• I crashed my 60Km target, I walked 91Km during February. :)
  
•  Did I get my 2 hours of focus for investment?
• No, I didn't get my 2 hours of investment focus time. :(
  
• What did I fix? 
• I re-potted some plants that were having a tough time in their old soil, and they are indeed looking much better already. :)
• Did I work out 3 times a week?
• No, managed to get 2 squeezed per week. :(

Wrap it up

Things are not looking good for two of my P2P platforms, however dividends are looking ok. We are to see how this conflict develops and what impact it will have in global economy in general. Life goes on, one way or another, doesn't it?

What a mad world we live in...