The fortune of a donkey

(Not) a milestone

When I published the 5th part of my investment story this week ( https://app.getquin.com/de/activity/eokWuJTFio ), commented @DividendenWaschbaer that still nobody knows how filthy rich I am. And got over 20 responses to that comment. @wealth_strategist_196 estimated my net worth at 1.3-1.7 million. In another post @Europoor started compiling the info from my past posts and came to the conclusion that I must be worth 750k to just under 1 million.

Guys, just ask me! We are a financial community and I am some jackass on the internet. I have no pain in sharing my wealth (or sharing anything that you think is my wealth - but it worked out for my investment story).

And here it is. Lower middle class or below, if Merz has his way 👍

Have fun with it 💋

How I beat the MSCI World by over 25,000% over 13 years

Part 5: Today (end of 2024) and conclusion

You can find the first part of my investment story (incl. background and TL;DR) here: https://getqu.in/JldknL/

The second part here: https://getqu.in/Ptei6g/

The third part here: https://getqu.in/sfTZ3P/

The fourth part here: https://getqu.in/d4GUta/

Welcome to the last part of my far too long investment story. But before that: Perhaps you've noticed that I've secretly switched the numbers? Originally, I was only able to beat the MSCI World by a paltry 21,000% and I was still imagining things. Due to the bull run since the publication of the first post in this series, I have now reached an impressive and absolutely sustainable 25,000% 🚀

Restructuring the portfolio thanks to Kellogg's

The Kellogg's experience from part 4 got me thinking. I came to the conclusion that I would never trust individual companies enough to invest a significant amount of money. I also shied away from the effort involved in analyzing companies. But I trusted the global economy. I therefore decided to sell all my individual shares and move the proceeds into my ETF.

At the end of 2021, my ETF portfolio still contained a few niche ETFs, for example on AI or environmental protection. I also sold these at the start of 2022 and reallocated them to my global portfolio. Fun fact: You might think that I sold the AI ETF much too early as a result. However, the performance from the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2024 was so awful that it was pulverized by a simple world ETF - despite the AI hype. Another indicator that such ETFs are generally not recommendable.

In addition to my world portfolio, I made a conscious decision to keep two sector ETFs on IT and healthcare in my portfolio. I know, sector ETFs are evil. I really expect IT and health care to outperform in the long term. So far, 50% of them have worked out 😁. Only time will tell whether I will be right. At least the two ETFs are not so heavily weighted.

I continued with crypto. Here, too, I mucked out and sold just a few weeks ago with $HBAR (+15,93%) and $IOTA (+32,72%) my last two Shitcoins. My crypto portfolio now only consists of $BTC (+0,12%) and a small share $ETH (-1,25%). The rule still applies here: I keep hodling until it becomes life-changing or goes to 0.

I also dissolved nonsensical "forms of saving" such as pension insurance, endowment insurance, bonus savings from the branch bank, ... ... I originally wanted to use the money freed up as equity for my own property. But before that, I had to take another critical look at this potential investment.

A property for own use? No thanks!

If you remember the first part, you may remember that I actually wanted to buy a property for my own use and saved up a lot of equity for it. When interest rates rose in 2022, I started doing the math. You can find the results in my series of articles entitled "Own home or rent": https://app.getquin.com/activity/FoLdCxttXY .

For my region and the properties we are considering, buying is currently not worthwhile at all. We also don't necessarily want to live the homeowner lifestyle. We don't want to tie ourselves down to such a big lump, have to bear a greater risk and then have even more work. A home must therefore be financially worthwhile for us, otherwise it doesn't make sense for us.

As the home was written off for the time being, I started to shift the equity I had saved into my ETF. The theory is that it's better to invest everything at once. Looking back, it would definitely have been a much better option to put everything into Welt AG at once in 2022 - the $VWRL (+0,02%) was between 90 and 100 euros at the time. But you're always smarter afterwards, so instead of a one-off reallocation, I decided to increase my monthly savings plan first to EUR 5,000 and later to EUR 7,500 and gradually reduce my home equity. I started in 2022 and will probably need another 1-2 years until the equity is completely in my ETF.

As soon as the equity in my own home is at 0, the money I currently have in managed funds and P2P will also be reallocated. However, I will keep my Riester pension. It's also going well.

Today and in the future, I will only save in my ETFs. Crypto + ETF is currently enough diversification for me. But I'm not ruling out the possibility of adding a property or gold to my portfolio at some point. But then in an appropriate ratio to the rest of my portfolio.

And how does this gigantic return come about?

Through an unexpected Bitcoin rain. 10 years after the Mt Gox hack and the first total loss of my crypto assets, I was able to close the chapter in a reasonably conciliatory way. Shortly after the hack in 2014, some of the stolen Bitcoin was recovered. After a 10-year process, airmail from Japan, many ups and downs, ... the time had finally come in 2024: I got a fraction of my deposits back. Despite the gigantic price performance since 2014, it wasn't a life-changing sum. So I kept on hodling.

And that, together with my crypto investments in 2017, is what made this gigantic return, which is nothing but luck. I was early, in the right place at the right time and idealistic/stupid enough. This also becomes clear if you just run my crypto portfolio in the getquin benchmark against common indices. And that despite all the shitcoins and the associated losses:

Finanzen aktuell

I was able to significantly increase my salary again by changing jobs. Over the years, I learned to sell myself well, to assess my value correctly and to negotiate hard. I also applied for jobs without need and was able to be selective. That was helpful. I was also always hard-working and had good references. And of course, I now live in a much more expensive city than I did a few years ago and have switched to an industry that pays much better (no, I'm not at $VOW (-0,15%) 😂). My gross annual salary is now around 150k, with all the trimmings. When I signed the contract, this gigantic sum humbled me. Especially since I started a good 15 years earlier with just 26k after my apprenticeship (see first part). But I tell it like it is: you get used to such sums very quickly.

But I still can't afford a higher savings rate. Now that I'm a dad, there are expenses for the child, financial compensation for mom, who is cutting back on her career, and soon costs for a larger apartment.

Conclusion

What advice can I give you? Get to grips with finances early on. Try something out. Treat yourself to something without throwing money out the window with both hands. Be crazy sometimes. Not everything always has to be rational. And most importantly: work on yourself, on your salary. Make yourself valuable. Perfect your craft and pay attention to what the job market is looking for. This is a much bigger lever than cashback, cheap food or a part-time job. And it increases your quality of life. I was able to increase my salary by around 12% per year on average. The $IWDA (-0,08%) can pack their bags.

Oh yes, of course you shouldn't blindly trust donkeys on the Internet or other dubious figures.

Kiss on the depot

Your donkey 💋

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PS: App update required. Currently only available in the mobile app.

From 18-year-old wannabe investment banker to successful private asset manager: my (bumpy) path to €300,000 in a custody account

Part 1 of X (let's see how many there will be): The new Gordon Gekko? Between Chinese small-cap recommendations from stock market letters and "AT&T is better than Amazon" (2010 - 2016)

Previous story:

Inspired by @DonkeyInvestor I would now also like to share my story and continue it if there is interest. Thanks for the cool idea!

My investment journey began about 2-3 years before my first securities purchase in 2013. While the financial crisis (2007-2009) only interested me marginally as a ~15-year-old, the emerging euro crisis from 2010 onwards aroused a much greater interest in the economy, sovereign debt and co. As part of some school work, I dealt with the debt crisis in Greece, among other things.

Through films like Wall Street or Margin Call - The Great Crash slowly sparked my interest in the stock market. With my first smartphone in 2012, I was able to secretly check share prices during lessons - which often led to the teacher confiscating it 😂 I primarily followed the prices of "cool" shares such as Daimler, Hugo Boss and Sony.

I grew a desire to become an investment banker myself and emigrate to Wall Street in New York (spoiler: neither happened 😉).

The first purchases:

My first purchases were made under contradictory circumstances. I was firmly convinced that a major crash was imminent (government debt, interest rate policy, ...) and was very much convinced by well-known crash prophets such as Dirk Müller.

Nevertheless, I wanted to play along and bought my first shares.

In 2013, I started my dual business studies at a global bank. When I started my studies, I finally made my first securities purchases. On the one hand, my capital-forming benefits went into the DWS Top Dividende, and on the other, I set up an ETF savings plan on the DAX. In 2014, I added further shares such as AT&T $T (+4,11%) Verizon $VZ (+0,18%) Shell $SHEL (+1,36%) and Sony $6758 (+1,97%) were added. While Sony was a great investment, I unfortunately sold the stock far too early. My purchase price was around €12 and I sold at around €18. If I hadn't sold Sony, it would have been a tenbagger at times.

My main investment criteria at the time were

- Low P/E ratio

- High dividend yield

- And/or "cool" company

So in 2014 I had to choose between Amazon $AMZN (+0,8%) ("cool, but no dividend & much too high P/E ratio") and AT&T ("high dividend, low P/E ratio"). And, of course, the decision sucked with today's knowledge.

Another company was Macy's $M (-2,6%) . When I was in New York and visited the largest shopping center in the world, I was sure I had to have this stock.

The only two stocks I still have in my portfolio from my early years are Procter & Gamble $PG (-1,39%) (bought in 2015) and Unilever $ULVR (-0,95%) (bought in 2016).

In 2016, I had a total of 14 individual shares in my portfolio, 12 of which were sold in the following years and will probably never end up in my portfolio again.

The first lesson:

After I realized professionally that the path to investment banking and New York was probably not the right one after all (40 hours of work is really exhausting, I don't need 80 or more in investment banking), I slowly realized that I wasn't the next Gordon Gekko or Warren Buffett either.

It was too boring for me to just invest in shares - after all, I wanted to get rich quick and drive a Porsche! So from 2014, I also started investing in other things (no, unfortunately not crypto).

I tried my hand at various certificates, reverse convertibles and the like, all with little success. The biggest learning I had was with an absolutely hot tip from the internet. It was a classic pump and dump game from a stock market letter. Someone had stocked up on shares in a Chinese small cap (Tianbao Holdings) and then called on everyone to buy: "Share with the chance of a 10,000% return - forget Apple and co." It was advertised like this or something similar at the time.

I took my entire monthly salary (around €800) and thought to myself: get in! It didn't matter what the company did or why the opportunity should be so great! At first things went up and I was quickly up 20%. Then it went downhill - the initial investor had probably made his return and withdrawn the money. The stock exchanges quickly realized this and stopped trading. I tried to sell the shares on various stock exchanges and was able to get rid of them in Berlin, Bremen or somewhere else - with a loss of 50%. Two weeks of work for nothing. Although it was "only" a loss of €400, it really annoyed me. Not just the loss, but that I fell for something like that.

In hindsight, the €400 was extremely well invested and helped me a lot in my future investment career.

Asset development & return:

How did the first 3-4 years on the stock market go and how did my assets develop?

Year Deposit value Return

2013 2.000€ -12%

2014 8.600€ -1%

2015 17.000€ +4%

2016 35.000€ +14%

All in all, these were lost years for me in terms of returns. You can also see this from the green line, which was mostly in negative territory.

The stock markets did very well, and yet I mostly only saw losses or very low returns.

Conclusion & outlook:

So in 2016 it was clear to me: no investment banking, no New York, I'm not the new Warren Buffett and I'm not going to get rich overnight.

In the following 3 years from 2016 to 2019, I built on my initial experiences and slowly developed into a better investor. Nevertheless, more big mistakes followed (Bitcoin, Wirecard, ...).

#strategy
#personalstrategy
#etfs

- How we prioritize and why -

Dear Community,

Over the past few weeks, I have occasionally read posts and comments regarding our prioritization of features. I would therefore like to share some background information:

First of all: 2024 will be our strongest year by far. We are growing by over 400% year-on-year, have launched 7 new markets and are gaining tens of thousands of new tracking users every month - with a strong upward trend. Thank you very much for that!

This growth was accompanied by many major development investments in infrastructure, connectivity, stability and new data providers. Of course, this is not always visible to our long-standing users in Germany - I understand that.

Why are we continuing to invest heavily in social (e.g. Coins & Rewards)?

Our full focus for the next few years is on growth, and we see social primarily as a growth engine. Good content generates organic reach and referrals bring new users. That's why we want to intensify and promote good content - as well as referrals.

From January, after the many major expansion projects, we will have more capacity to improve the tracking product itself. We see and consider all your feedback and wishes. However, we must of course also prioritize according to the impact for the company.

Our prioritization is purely data-driven, based on the impact on hundreds of thousands of new and existing users per year.

However, I can assure you that many of the features you have requested will follow soon. We are currently working on the roadmaps for next year and will share them with you transparently.

PS: For feedback, criticism and feature requests, please use the right channels. Every message received by e-mail or via our feedback tool will be read and processed. The feed and comments are intended for high-quality financial content.

As usual, there will be a major getquin update and annual review towards Christmas. :)