Alternative Investing Platforms (YieldStreet, Cadre, AngelList, etc)

[marcusqueen2011]

does anyone here invest on any of these alternative platforms? Seems like a lot of buzz around them - not sure how real they are. Would love some real feedback.

[brellis1vt]

I'm currently trying yieldstreet and peerstreet.  So far so good with yieldstreet but I haven't invested with them long enough to recommend it.  Plus they only have limited opportunities and I am looking for things that are recession resistant.  I would not recommend peerstreet.  At first it was good because you could setup automatic investments for high yield loans.  Now the system won't let you do that and they rarely have returns higher than 8% (used to get 10-12%). I also have had a loan default and they haven't communicated the plan well.  I am pulling all my money out of it as soon as possible.

[agoraphone]

MRMM has a post on Peer Street: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/05/02/peerstreet/

I've been using it for a couple months now - so far so good. $1,000 minimum and auto investing makes diversification easy and lowers your risk. I'm earning around 8%, which is not as good as it was when the platform first launched, but still better than many other asset classes.

I'd love to hear some folks' impressions of YieldStreet.

[HeadedWest2029]

I've been interested off and on with these investment vehicles.  At least with something like Peerstreet you have a first lien position when things go south.  Not sure on YieldStreet.  For peer-to-peer lending like Lending Club, Prosper, forget about it.  In general I feel like the glory days (if there were glory days) are over.  Across the board it seems like returns have drifted lower, institutional money started getting involved.  Taxes are more complicated and less tax efficient.  Oh, and the hidden cost of cash drag.  There's often a delay between getting cash returned and reinvested.  I read something the other day that despite private equity getting superior returns to public markets, when you factor in cash drag (the time between raising capital and deploying the money) the returns a pretty pedestrian (like ~6%).  I've experienced similar drag in these types of investments.  TLDR - I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze

[HeadedWest2029]

Any update from the folks using YieldStreet?  I noticed you can earn a $500 bonus when depositing $10k.  I remember people on other threads saying it wasn't a great experience though.

[brellis1vt]

I have personally used YieldStreet and PeerStreet for a few years now.
YieldStreet has been good so far.  I had one loan that went into default and was really concerned I wouldn't get my money back (during COVID). But I got all my money with the proper interest.
I have been highly disappointed in PeerStreet and would not recommend it.  The returns are not great these days (6-8%) and it isn't enough to deal with the illiquidity of their product.  Also, I personally feel they do a very poor job of dealing with loans that go bad.  On one property they started the foreclosure process in October of 2018 and I still haven't seen a dime.
Another one I tried to use is ArborCrowd but they haven't had any deals for a long time.