When Junk Bonds Become My Moolah

Equity hasn't been kind in recent years. While a historical performance of 10-12% (with dividend reinvested) may have been the norm of past, it's been far, far lower of late. But income investing has remained decent with 3-4% dividend payouts while REITs have been giving me 5-6%.

With a combined family portfolio that has crossed seven digits, I felt that I can afford to ante up my risk palette. So I've started placing a small percentage of investment funds into a P2P platform, specifically, Moolahsense.

Spreading my investments into numerous blocks of a few thousand dollars each and across multiple loans, it's effectively creating a DIY junk bond fund isn't it? The nominal loan interests have averaged 17-18% across the portfolio so far. With many of the payments being made on monthly basis, after a while, it seems like there is an incoming payment every other day. Is that shiok or what?

But the shiokness can be deceiving. Logically, I would expect some percentage of defaults. I mean seriously, why would any company take up loans of 17-18% if they could borrow from banks at lower rates? It's almost as bad as owing credit card debts. Clearly, the banks see them as so risky that they are not even prepared to offer them a cent. So, everyone of them is a potential default case.

Like banks that make provisions for non-performing loans, I'm making a provision for 5% defaults. In simplistic sense, if a $100,000 portfolio is making 17%, that's an interest of $17,000. With a 5% default on principal, that's a loss of $5,000. But, the overall outcome would still be 12% gain in net income. Not bad.

But, if the defaults climb above 17%, I'll be in the red.

I'll see how this turns out after a year or two.

Supposing a portfolio of $1.3 million with a spread as follows:
- $1,000,000 of stocks @ 3.5% dividends = $35,000
- $200,000 of REITs @ 6% = $12,000
- $100,000 of P2P loans @ 12% = $12,000
That would generate a passive annual income of $59,000, or almost $5,000 a month.