Why P2P Lending Should Be A Sizeable Part Of Your Retirement Planning

Thrugelmir

bostonerimus said:

Thrugelmir said:

bostonerimus said:

Thrugelmir said:

Aceace said:

Thrugelmir said:

Aceace said:

Your right, this furrow is a lonely place ☹

3 and half years isn't long enough to ascertain the results of your ploughing. When you've experienced a full economic cycle or a severe downturn. Then you'll have a better idea as to whether what you've sowed will reap a substantial return.  The fog of the global pandemic has yet to lift. The greatest challenge that investors have faced in a very long time. 

And thank you for not adding "therefore it's a cr*p investment and you will definitely lose all your cash" 🙃

You might, you might not.  The key to any investment is do plenty of research and due diligence. Spend enough time and as a small retail investor you may well be able to carve yourself a profitable niche. The one certainty is that's rarely any free lunches. 

My lunch wasn't free, but it was cheap and I didn't have to work at it either. No niches, no P2P, just index trackers for 30 years. I don't have the time or interest to do due diligence on companies, fund managers, P2P loans or platforms and I would not like to keep track of 35 of them.

When you are sitting at the top of the mountain it's easy to be smug and believe that it was ones own abilities that got you there. Rather than simply good fortune. Without events such as the benefit of a 40 year bond bull market. The next 30 years may well be a very different era. Much has changed in our lifetimes. 

That's true, everything is easy in hindsight. I did have the benefit of booming bonds, but also some pretty scary equity crashes. However, I think the critical thing was that I was always able to buy or sell on open, well regulated, markets. 

At least you missed the rise and fall of the Nikkei index. 

bostonerimus

Thrugelmir said:

bostonerimus said:

Thrugelmir said:

bostonerimus said:

Thrugelmir said:

Aceace said:

Thrugelmir said:

Aceace said:

Your right, this furrow is a lonely place ☹

3 and half years isn't long enough to ascertain the results of your ploughing. When you've experienced a full economic cycle or a severe downturn. Then you'll have a better idea as to whether what you've sowed will reap a substantial return.  The fog of the global pandemic has yet to lift. The greatest challenge that investors have faced in a very long time. 

And thank you for not adding "therefore it's a cr*p investment and you will definitely lose all your cash" 🙃

You might, you might not.  The key to any investment is do plenty of research and due diligence. Spend enough time and as a small retail investor you may well be able to carve yourself a profitable niche. The one certainty is that's rarely any free lunches. 

My lunch wasn't free, but it was cheap and I didn't have to work at it either. No niches, no P2P, just index trackers for 30 years. I don't have the time or interest to do due diligence on companies, fund managers, P2P loans or platforms and I would not like to keep track of 35 of them.

When you are sitting at the top of the mountain it's easy to be smug and believe that it was ones own abilities that got you there. Rather than simply good fortune. Without events such as the benefit of a 40 year bond bull market. The next 30 years may well be a very different era. Much has changed in our lifetimes. 

That's true, everything is easy in hindsight. I did have the benefit of booming bonds, but also some pretty scary equity crashes. However, I think the critical thing was that I was always able to buy or sell on open, well regulated, markets. 

At least you missed the rise and fall of the Nikkei index. 

True, but I wouldn't have had that much in there anyway. I did have to deal with the market crashes of 1987, 2000, 2008, 2015, 2020 etc. but things came back. My problem with P2P early on was the closed and controlled nature of the platforms and that they had not been tested through a few market/economic cycles. Too many unknowns to invest.

Thrugelmir

bostonerimus said:

Thrugelmir said:

bostonerimus said:

Thrugelmir said:

bostonerimus said:

Thrugelmir said:

Aceace said:

Thrugelmir said:

Aceace said:

Your right, this furrow is a lonely place ☹

3 and half years isn't long enough to ascertain the results of your ploughing. When you've experienced a full economic cycle or a severe downturn. Then you'll have a better idea as to whether what you've sowed will reap a substantial return.  The fog of the global pandemic has yet to lift. The greatest challenge that investors have faced in a very long time. 

And thank you for not adding "therefore it's a cr*p investment and you will definitely lose all your cash" 🙃

You might, you might not.  The key to any investment is do plenty of research and due diligence. Spend enough time and as a small retail investor you may well be able to carve yourself a profitable niche. The one certainty is that's rarely any free lunches. 

My lunch wasn't free, but it was cheap and I didn't have to work at it either. No niches, no P2P, just index trackers for 30 years. I don't have the time or interest to do due diligence on companies, fund managers, P2P loans or platforms and I would not like to keep track of 35 of them.

When you are sitting at the top of the mountain it's easy to be smug and believe that it was ones own abilities that got you there. Rather than simply good fortune. Without events such as the benefit of a 40 year bond bull market. The next 30 years may well be a very different era. Much has changed in our lifetimes. 

That's true, everything is easy in hindsight. I did have the benefit of booming bonds, but also some pretty scary equity crashes. However, I think the critical thing was that I was always able to buy or sell on open, well regulated, markets. 

At least you missed the rise and fall of the Nikkei index. 

True, but I wouldn't have had that much in there anyway. I did have to deal with the market crashes of 1987, 2000, 2008, 2015, 2020 etc. but things came back. My problem with P2P early on was the closed and controlled nature of the platforms and that they had not been tested through a few market/economic cycles. Too many unknowns to invest.

If passive global equity trackers had existed in the 70's. Then people would have had a reasonable weighting in their portfolios by the time of the crash. Was a time when many Japanese companies ruled their industry sectors. Was the Nikkei crash that was a major cause of the underperformance of endowment policies in the UK.  Generally speaking the 80/90's were highly productive periods for the economy.  From robotic machine tools, to the PC, fax machine, mobile phone etc. 

I could tell many tales having been involved in Company finance including capital funding over a long period. Which is the primary reason behind my caution towards those that believe it's a land of milk and honey. 

Rollinghome

Thrugelmir said:At least you missed the rise and fall of the Nikkei index. 

I didn't, unfortunately.  I put £5k into the Fleming Japanese (now JP Morgan Japanese JFJ) IPO a couple of  years or so after the peak in Dec 89.  The big fall had happened and looked a decent bet.  Turned out to be just having a halfway rest. I watched it go to a 50% "profit" before carrying on down to the bottom years later.

Taught me it was never too soon to take profits or too late to cut loses, that you can't read a bottom by looking at a chart, and to exercise extreme caution with IT IPOs.

Thrugelmir

Rollinghome said:

Thrugelmir said:At least you missed the rise and fall of the Nikkei index. 

I didn't, unfortunately.  I put £5k into the Fleming Japanese (now JP Morgan Japanese JFJ) IPO a couple of  years or so after the peak in Dec 89.  The big fall had happened and looked a decent bet.  Turned out to be just having a halfway rest. I watched it go to a 50% "profit" before carrying on down to the bottom years later.

Taught me it was never too soon to take profits or too late to cut loses, that you can't read a bottom by looking at a chart, and to exercise extreme caution with IT IPOs.

Experience shapes us. Was the Nikkei crash that led me to be cautious of the Dot Com boom. Neil Woodford at that time made the right call. By sticking to fundamental investment principles. Rather than getting drawn up into the hype that surrounded many of the companies. 

Rollinghome

Thrugelmir said: Experience shapes us. Was the Nikkei crash that led me to be cautious of the Dot Com boom. Neil Woodford at that time made the right call. By sticking to fundamental investment principles. Rather than getting drawn up into the hype that surrounded many of the companies. 

I'd like to think I avoided the worst of that as a result of acquired wisdom, but truth is, as often happens, it was mostly luck.  I was just very busy, particularly with a website I was running then, and investing went on the back burner.  I just happened to come out the other side with a stack of uninvested cash.  A couple of years earlier and I'd have been invested up to my neck.

Had I seized the opportunity as much as I should, I'd be very pleased with myself.  The pricey Updata trading software I was using fell to the millenium bug, so that was my excuse for not giving my entire attention

bostonerimus

Thrugelmir said:

Rollinghome said:

Thrugelmir said:At least you missed the rise and fall of the Nikkei index. 

I didn't, unfortunately.  I put £5k into the Fleming Japanese (now JP Morgan Japanese JFJ) IPO a couple of  years or so after the peak in Dec 89.  The big fall had happened and looked a decent bet.  Turned out to be just having a halfway rest. I watched it go to a 50% "profit" before carrying on down to the bottom years later.

Taught me it was never too soon to take profits or too late to cut loses, that you can't read a bottom by looking at a chart, and to exercise extreme caution with IT IPOs.

Experience shapes us. Was the Nikkei crash that led me to be cautious of the Dot Com boom. Neil Woodford at that time made the right call. By sticking to fundamental investment principles. Rather than getting drawn up into the hype that surrounded many of the companies. 

That's me too. Because I fell into index tracker investing in the late 1980s, first with TIAA-CREF and then with Vanguard, I was primed to keep things simple and inexpensive from the start. That bias means I avoid "star mangers" like Woodford and now Smith, and hyped things like P2P, crowdfunding of small companies and crypto. I've missed lots of stuff, good and bad, but it worked out well and was simple to implement and manage - although not easy during the crashes.