Harmoney

[myles]

Just my thoughts:

If that's the case then I wonder if one would be better off just investing in Smartshares ETFs like MDZ which has had a return of 19.77% over the last 5 years which would be pretty difficult to get on Harmoney.

There is a little * there that needs to be read and understood. 19.77% with reinvestment (i.e. compounding), very easily achievable over 5 years with Harmoney. I expect to exceed that by a significant amount.

Even if the value of the Smartshares fund went down during a downturn you would still have the shares and the value would recover over time. On the other hand, when your Harmoney loans default during a downturn you lose that money forever.

There is no guarantee that shares will recover. Until you sell them they have no guaranteed value. With Harmoney you will loose some of your capital in a down-turn, unlikely to be all of it - review the interest rates of the higher risk loans that are the ones that are likely to default, you have to balance that risk vs the reward to achieve an overall 'good' result. Choose wisely, you make a good return, choose poorly you don't. (Very similar to shares - past returns are no guarantee of future ruturns.)

Also, investing in a passive investment like Smarthares takes ver little time while Harmoney is very time-consuming. Yes, investing in Harmoney can be fun and exciting but I do wonder sometimes if the time and risk are worth it in the long run when there are better investment options.

Now that I'm not adding funds, I'm not finding it time consuming at all - but compared to the managed funds (that someone is paid to manage), yes there is some time investment to consider.