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How to invest: 5 basic tips for beginner investors in stocks

Investments for beginners

The development of technology has increasingly paved the way for ordinary people to global financial markets. But easy access for individual investors to international markets comes with the need to be educated about them and to understand the risks they take.

1. Do your homework

Once you have decided on which platform you want to invest, you have to do your homework. Investing means more than choosing a few random shares, with the hope that everything will go well on its own. A familiar example would be that when you buy a house you do not choose one at random from advertisements, but you will go to visit it. And to determine if it has a fair price, you look at the neighborhood, the real estate market in general and then you make a decision.

Similarly, before you start investing in stocks or any other asset class, you need to research the market to understand what you are investing in. Read about each asset and invest only when you feel comfortable that you can make a well-informed decision.

Thanks to the internet, nowadays it is easy to access information about listed companies. You can see what their income and history are, you can read their news and recommendations for investors. Sector or market information or even political news is also important – for example, we can now see how airlines, even the best performing ones, are affected by Covid-19 travel restrictions or how incentive packages economically affects markets. Being up to date with things that happen in the media helps you better understand the evolutions of stocks and trends in the markets.

2. Define your financial goals

Before you invest your money, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will do it. You need to understand your personal goals as an investor. Do you plan to invest in the long term (10 years for example) or in the short term? What types of investments will help you achieve your goals? What are you ready to risk?

Investors should be encouraged to define an investment strategy that suits their needs, including their risk attitude. To mitigate risk, they should diversify their portfolio, adopt a long-term attitude and invest only in financial instruments with which they are familiar and for which they understand the risks they take.

3. Invest the money you don’t need in the next five years

Risk appetite should always be linked to investment objectives. Evaluate your current financial situation to understand if you can take the risk and always invest with money you will not need in the next five years. Never invest more than you can afford to lose!
You need to have a long enough time horizon for the investments you make to avoid market fluctuations. If you have an amount at your disposal, but you know that you will need this capital in the next 12 months, then the recommendation is to invest in a less volatile asset class, such as bonds.

Over time, stock markets have provided excellent returns to long-term investors. For example, since the establishment of the S&P 500 index (stock index composed of the top 500 American companies) in 1926, it has increased by an average of 10% annually. This is a much higher return than those generated by other assets, such as government bonds. You can also start investing in shares with a relatively small amount of money using a commission-free platform, as commissions can affect your profit margins.

One of the factors that discourages people from investing online is cost. The idea is still widespread that you need a lot of money to start investing. Moreover, equity investments are often perceived as an extremely complex process, involving technical knowledge and attracting expensive commissions. This is no longer the case. A number of online investment platforms, conduct transactions with shares without commissions, as well as fractional shares – you can actually buy a part of a share, a percentage of it, expressed in dollars. This offers the opportunity to invest $ 50 in high-value stocks, such as those of Amazon (which trades at about $ 3,000 per share), Tesla (over $ 700) or Alphabet (Google) – whose shares would cost about $ 2,000 a piece.

4. Practice before you start investing

Start with small amounts of money or practice with a virtual demo account, while learning the markets and defining your strategy.
Demo accounts of several online platforms allow you to practice without risk. Every user who registers receives access to a demo account, credited with virtual money, so that they can practice their strategies, learning to work with the platform before investing with real money.

5. Diversify your portfolio

Diversification is a risk management strategy and the proverb “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” explains the concept very well. In other words, invest in different assets or market shares to limit your exposure to a certain class of assets or financial instruments.
The purpose of diversification is not to achieve very high returns, but to manage risks. Think about what it would have been like if you had invested all your savings in the shares of an airline company just before the pandemic, which made travel difficult. You don’t want to be completely dependent on the performance of a single company or a single sector, maybe even the economy of a single country or continent.

Coinbase International – Buy and sell cryptocurrency. Send money internationally for free

Coinbase International

Coinbase started in 2012 with the radical idea that anyone, anywhere, should be able to easily and securely send and receive Bitcoin. Today, they offer a trusted and easy-to-use platform for accessing the broader cryptoeconomy.

Coinbase have approximately 43 million verified users, 7,000 institutions, and 115,000 ecosystem partners in over 100 countries that easily and securely invest, spend, save, earn, and use crypto.

You can now send money to any user with a Coinbase account around the world using XRP or USDC. By using cryptocurrencies that are optimized for cross-border transmission, you can send and receive money virtually instantly by sending those cryptocurrencies and having the recipient convert them into local currency. There’s zero fee for sending to other Coinbase users and a nominal on-chain network fee for sending outside of Coinbase.

In fact, you can send any cryptocurrency supported by Coinbase to another Coinbase user or to an account outside of Coinbase. XRP and USDC may be better suited for smaller international money transfers due to their faster processing and lower transaction fees. USDC also has the added advantage of being exchangeable for one US dollar, rather than being volatile in price like other cryptocurrencies.

What you’ll need to open a Coinbase account:

– be at least 18 years old
– a government-issued photo ID (they don’t accept passport cards)
– a computer or smartphone connected to the internet
– a phone number connected to your smartphone (they will send SMS text messages)
– the latest version of your browser, or the latest Coinbase App version. If you’re using the Coinbase app, make sure your phone’s operating system is up-to-date.
Coinbase doesn’t charge a fee to create or maintain your Coinbase account.

How to send money internationally with Coinbase?

1. Sign in to your Coinbase account, or create one.
2. Confirm your recipient can convert XRP or USDC into local currency.
3. Convert your desired funds into XRP or USDC. 6
4. Access your XRP or USDC wallet and select send.
5. Enter the amount you’d like to send and the target wallet or email address.

With Coinbase you can create your cryptocurrency portfolio

Coinbase has a variety of features that make it one of the best place to start trading:

– Manage your portfolio: Buy and sell popular digital currencies, keep track of them in the one place.
– Recurring buys: Invest in cryptocurrency slowly over time by scheduling buys daily, weekly, or monthly.
– Vault protection: For added security, store your funds in a vault with time delayed withdrawals.
– Mobile apps: Stay on top of the markets with the Coinbase app for Android or iOS.

Fast Invest peer-to-peer lending marketplace overview

Fast Invest logo

Fast Invest is an innovative FinTech company that offers its customers the chance to invest in consumer-based loans issued in European countries. All loans in the marketplace come with Buyback and Default Guarantees.

They firmly believe that everyone should be given access to the digital investment world. Technology has evolved so much over the past few years creating a smoother, faster and more reliable money flow. Their mission is to enable cross-border investing for every European citizen. The goal is to achieve this by building a stable, secure platform that makes it possible for users to invest in different countries, loan types and loan originators. Users can select from the pool of listed loans and invest in those that match their preferences.

Fast Invest’s business model provides access to investors and makes secure investing simple and accessible for anyone interested in investments and innovative ways of earning. Users can select from the pool of listed loans and invest in the one’s meeting their preferences, earning up to 14% in interest.

Fast Invest can offer better terms than traditional banks because they exclude unnecessary intermediaries from the process, thus allowing investors to save money that would have been otherwise spent on commissions and fees for third party services.

Overall FinTech (Financial Technology) companies are more flexible in terms of rates and operational costs than other organisations in the traditional banking sector. FinTech companies operate in diverse groups and incur fewer expenses than the traditional banking sector, thus providing the opportunity to give back more significant returns to the people.

How does the Fast Invest platform work?

  1. A person applies for a loan at a loan originator and prepares all the necessary documents and fills in the appropriate forms. The loan originator checks the applicant’s credit score, evaluates risk and grants the loan.
  2. Credit institutions provide the granted loans for investment. Fast Invest’s Compliance and Credit Risk Department then approves the conditions of the credit agreement and puts them on our Loan List for investment.
  3. The borrower makes monthly repayments according to the terms in the credit agreement and the payment schedule. Payment instalments are divided proportionally according to the amount invested in that particular loan for every investor.
  4. As soon as the borrower whose loan you have invested in repays his loan, you will start receiving payments of both the principal sum and the interest for that investment period. Funds are automatically transferred to your Fast Invest account. You can reinvest those funds in any available loan using the Auto Invest tool.

Opening a Fast Invest investor’s account

  1. Fill in the investor’s registration form.
  2. Add funds to your Fast Invest account.
  3. Choose a loan to invest in from the Loan List.
  4. According to the loan payment schedule, you will start receiving both repayments on the principal and the interest. Funds will be transferred to your Fast Invest account.

*NOTE: The investor must confirm his/her identity in order to request the immediate withdrawal of funds from the Fast Invest account to a personal bank account.

Investors must be at least 18 years old, have a valid email address and a personal bank account in their name in the European Union.

For the identification purposes, you must provide a national identification card (scanned or photographed both sides) or a passport (scanned or photographed).

There are three steps for Fast Invest client verification:

  1. The client must send a copy of his/her national identification document. If there are any questions or concerns relating to the identification of the client, the Compliance Office support team will request a second identification document and bill to successfully identify the client;
  2. The client receives an email which must be confirmed via the included link;
  3. The client must verify his/her phone number by entering the SMS code sent directly to his/her phone.

Companies cannot register with Fast Invest platform, or make investments.

Investing with Fast Invest platform

Right now, the platform provides consumer-based loans issued across the European Union.

All listed loans are 100% pre-funded by the Loan Originator. Moreover, the Loan Originator keeps at least a 5% stake in every single deal, proving they have “skin in the game”.

On the Loan List, you can manually filter all listed loans, and manually pick the ones aligning with your preferences by determining: term, currency, amount, interest rate, and loan origin.

By using Auto Invest, you can create a portfolio, specifying specific parameters (portfolio size, maximum investment per loan, projected interest, time to maturity, etc.). Afterwards, the A.I. system will automatically select loans that meet your specified criteria and invests in available funds continuously. You can alter the settings or stop the portfolio at any time by visiting the Auto Invest portfolio list in your account.

You can check your investment portfolio at any time from the My Investment page or check the Account Statement page for full information on account transactions.

Auto Invest loans are marked with the symbol.

What is the buyback guarantee?

If you decide to stop investing in the selected loan and sell the investment (at any time before the scheduled full payment date), Fast Invest will buy back your investment in 1 business day, guaranteed.

To sell your investment, just log in to your Fast Invest account, click the My Investment section, select the loan you would like to sell and click “sell”. After the Account Management Support Team has approved it, you will receive the funds in your Fast Invest investors account.*

*Note: always remember, when selling your investment ahead of time you will lose all interest earned through the process. However, you will get your invested funds back. An icon indicates these payments secured by the BuyBack Guarantee.

What is the default guarantee?

If a payment instalment is overdue by 3 (three) or more days, the Default Guarantee will settle the arrears. The icon will mark these payments as paid by the Default Guarantee.

On the Fast Invest platform, there are no investment limits for individual investors. You can start investing with 1 Euro.

How does the currency exchange work?

The Fast Invest platform supports 4 fiat currencies – European Euro (EUR), United States Dollar (USD), United Kingdom Pound (GBP) and Polish Zloty (PLN).

The currency exchange is a simple and easy process.

  1. On the exchange page, select which currency you want to convert to.
  2. Enter the desired amount in one of the input fields.
  3. Confirm the transaction.

Currency exchange rates are calculated via rates from the European Central Bank.

Real estate projects – unused potential of investments in the Baltic States

Envestio logo

In Envestio portfolio you will find some projects wich are located in Baltic States. Is it safe to invest in these projects? First of all it depends on economic growth and economic growth forecasts in these countries.

What are forecasts of economic development of the Baltic States?

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as open economies gain profit from rapid cyclic acceleration and growth of world trade. Based on the IMF World Economy report, it is expected that annual growth both in 2018 and in 2019 will achieve record of seven years or 3.9%. Global recovery currently happens much more steadily and has solidified all over the world, besides global entrepreneurship confidence level is record high, which respectively affects further rise of the internal demand an d improves the labour market.
Only geopolitical tension and risk of political uncertainty are two factors that may cause potentially negative effect on total positive external demand of the Baltic States. Despite strong prospective of growth, Europe is directly affected by Brexit. However, direct influence of the United Kingdom’s trade links on the Baltic States still remains limited. Speaking about risks, conflicts about trade can also decrease record high level of economic optimism and global trade.

Unusually powerful rise is forecasted for the Baltic States, providing that the growth rate will only normalize starting from 2019.

On the favourable external background, in the last year Estonia and Latvia achieved growth rate of over 4% (4.9 % and 4.5 % compared to the previous year, respectively), and Lithuania showed stable annual growth of GDP – 3.8 %. Similarly to other countries of the Eurozone, cyclic recovery has gained speed, and it is forecasted that the biggest contribution to the growth of countries in the next year will be provided by the domestic demand.
Eurozone annual growth in 2018 will be 2.3%, it supports the growth rate in the Baltic States that will be above the maintained long-term rate, however it will gradually slow down due to basic effects and exhausting of yet unused reserves of resources. It is expected that export growth from the initial powerful acceleration will come to the normal level and will include both products and services, providing that increased growth will take place exactly in sector of services. Growth restrictions will first be reflected in the labour market, while lack of qualified labour grows.

Economic bases of the Baltic States are still stable, finances of the countries are almost balanced and public debt levels are the lowest in the whole Eurozone. Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian main future challenges mostly are of structural nature and are related to challenges in acceleration of productivity and growth of added value.

Baltic States will still be ones of the most rapidly growing Eurozone countries, with shrinking significant income difference compared to the European trade partners.

In this long-term adventure we must avoid temptations in respect of excessive domestic stimuli. Quite the other way, long-term growth is based upon complex choices, for instance, in the smart specialization, development of innovations and technologies, in order to promote export and profit. Increase of research and development (R&D) expenses in the private sector, strengthening of the ecosystem of small and medium companies and new companies and especially investments in human capital are examples of modern solutions that must be further used, in order to gain maximum benefit from the next decade’s global technological and digital bull race. Revenue of sectors of globalized technologies will still exceed forecasts.

Real estate projects – unused potential of investments in the Baltic States

Today we can say with confidence that investments in real estates of the Baltic region are the most profitable and efficient way to not only keep, but also multiply cash assets.
Situation in Europe also slowly improves. Stress caused by the refugee crisis decreases, besides economic factors of the European countries also slowly improve. Since main investors in the Baltic States come from the EU countries, their opinion of further growth prospective has increased and optimism slowly grows. In truth the United Kingdom’s departure from the EU is still ahead. However, it will probably cause investors to look for new places to invest money and create new companies in the EU. And one of the most prospective opportunities is the Baltic region.
Latvia still has many unused opportunities to invest in housing – Luminor bank has expressed its opinion at the conference “How will real estate market develop in Latvia?”.

Approximately 85% of homes in Latvia are not encumbered with credits, this means that opportunities to borrow for investments in housing are wide. Compare – for instance, in the Netherlands all homes have mortgage liabilities. In the Eurozone average proportion of mortgage loans to the gross domestic product is 40%, and in the Baltic States – just 16%. In turn, ability of the Baltic residents to purchase homes is assessed as good.

Housing market in Estonia and Lithuania is currently close to maturity, while in Latvia activity in the housing market is still quite slack. In turn, crediting cycle is relatively new and will only gain speed.
The whole Baltic Sea region currently sees rapid growth, and from the point of view economics this is a good time to invest in the Baltic region’s projects and gain from it guaranteed profit.

Find profitable investment projects in Baltics with Envestio

EBV Finance joins Mintos and you can now invest in low-risk VAT receivables

Mintos logo

The leading VAT refund provider in Central and Eastern Europe has joined Mintos. EBV Finance offers fast VAT and excise duty refund services to transportation companies in Europe. You can now invest in VAT receivables from European governments and earn returns of up to 9%.

Established in 2009, EBV Finance is an international company lead by a team of factoring experts. Based in Lithuania, it offers fast VAT and excise duty refund services to transportation companies, which have applied for VAT and excise duty refunds from governments in Europe. EBV Finance issues VAT refunds from 31 European countries, the main receivables come from Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany and Austria.

The process of tax refunds can be burdensome, taking up to eight months and can lead to frozen working capital. EBV Finance is a great solution to get access to the refunds in just two days. Once EBV Finance has approved the loan, it takes over the carrier’s application with the government. EBV Finance is a specialist in tax administration and is able to receive the tax refunds faster than it would have taken its clients.

“We are very glad to offer investors on Mintos the opportunity to invest in VAT receivables from European governments. EBV Finance’s loan portfolio is unique. Because the governments are legally obliged to refund the VAT and excise duties to the company, the risk of a default on the payment is virtually non-existent. This means investors can earn great risk-adjusted return,” says Martins Sulte, CEO and Co-founder of Mintos.

The average loan listed on Mintos is EUR 1 000 with a repayment period of up to 9 months. For EBV Finance loans you can expect a net annual return of up to 9%.

EBV Finance will keep 10% of each loan placed on Mintos on its balance sheet, to keep its interests aligned with those of investors. The company ensures a buyback guarantee for all loans that are delinquent for more than 60 days.

EBV Finance has the largest VAT refund portfolio in the Baltic states. Per year, EBV Finance has refunded more than EUR 80 million and this number is growing at a rapid pace. In 2017, the revenue for the company was EUR 3 million and the net profit was around EUR 1.5 million. The company has made a profit every year since its inception in 2009.

Since its establishment, EBV Finance has acquired more than 1 200 clients including DSV, DHL, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics and many others large international transport groups. EBV Finance works with well-known fuel suppliers such as Circle K, ESSO, Total and others.

Currently, EBV Finance operates in nine countries in Europe: Germany, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Spain, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and plans to enter new markets in the near future.

How to sell multiple loans as portfolios on Secondary Market at Bondora

Bondora logo

In may 2017 Bondora released a new feature enabling investors to sell multiple loans as one portfolio in Secondary Market. This feature adds a new tool for the investors to increase liquidity and manage their portfolio risk more effectively.

Before, investors could sell investments from their portfolio one by one by adding the loans to sales cart and signing the sales orders in the Investments page. The new feature adds the possibility to combine the loans you want to sell into one portfolio and put this portfolio to sale on Secondary Market.

To sell multiple investments as one portfolio, just mark the “Sell as a portfolio” checkbox in the Sales list popup. The summary of the investments is displayed in the same view. In addition, you are able to set the price for the portfolio manually by marking the checkbox for “Set a portfolio price”. If you do not set the price manually, the system sets the sum value of outstanding principals as the portfolio price. Next, you just have to continue and sign the sales.

Bondora - Sale multiple loans

Find portfolios for sale on Secondary Market

To see all the portfolios for sale by other investors, go to the Secondary Market page and enable the “Show portfolios” option on the top right. This quick filter only displays portfolios for sale. You can look into each portfolio and see which loans are included and what is their history and status.

Bondora - find porfolios

This feature offers a new level of liquidity for Bondora users. If an investor wishes to divest themselves of a loan they can do so before it reaches maturity. Additionally, investors can increase the liquidity of lower rated loans by including them with higher rated loans in a single portfolio, thus increasing the chances of liquidation.

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