Recently, we spoke to Thomas, a German investor who shared his goals-based approach to investing on Mintos!
Thomas, tell us a bit about you as an investor.
“Well, I’ve been investing for some time, but not always on my own. In the beginning, I had a financial consultant who used to suggest certain investments to me, but investing this way didn’t meet my expectations. So I decided to take charge of my investing strategy and undertake my own research.”
What led you to start investing on Mintos?
“Around 5 years ago, I heard about the peer-to-peer lending market and decided to test out some of the existing platforms in Germany. But the returns were quite low, so I started looking for platforms with higher interest rates. Eventually, I found Mintos, where I set up some conservative investment strategies.”
“Investing on a platform from a country outside your own can be a little nerve-wracking in the beginning. But as I got a feel for the platform and its security, I started to ramp up my activity and become more active.”
Are you a passive or active investor?
“I’m investing for the long-term, but I’m actively involved in choosing my investments on Mintos. I think, in the beginning, I was probably too involved! I was constantly trying to buy and sell investments to squeeze in extra returns, but in doing so, I never had a properly diversified portfolio. So now, my focus has shifted to creating a well-diversified portfolio.
At the moment, I have a few custom automated strategies set up. One of these is focused on profit with high-interest EUR-only investments. However, I’m aware that with higher returns there’s higher risk, so I try to balance this out with more conservative investments in other strategies.”
Thomas’ investor tip
“I often say to friends and family, if you want to invest in something, you should have a clear plan. Whenever I invest funds, I set a goal and timeframe for them at the very beginning.
This segmentation helps me manage my expectations. With long-term investments, I know I don’t need to worry about daily market movements. For example, I have some investments in foreign currency on Mintos that aren’t doing so well this year, but because I wasn’t planning on needing those funds for a while, I’m happy to wait for them to recover. For my EUR investments, I tend to set short to medium-term goals, so I have options on Mintos to withdraw funds when I need to. In these cases, I’m more aware of what’s happening to them as things shift in the market.
If I look back on my time since investing, the wins have outweighed the losses as in the long-term, I’ve been able to recover from market downturns.”
To learn more about the value of setting investment goals, visit the Investor Academy
Any closing thoughts?
“One thing that stands out about Mintos is that the investments originate from all these countries. Offerings on other platforms tend to be much more localized, which makes it much harder to achieve diversification. Also, the Mintos app and website make it easy to set up and manage my investments – for me, they’ve got just the right level of detail.”
Thanks, Thomas!
