Coffee with FFN and Cayden Chang

Cayden Chang is the Director and Founder of Mind Kinesis Management International LLP.  His company runs Singapore’s First Value Investing Programme Recommended by Mary Buffett.

FFN: At what age did you get started in investing?

CC: I started at age 23. I wished it would be earlier.

FFN: How did you get interested in investing?

CC: It all started when I was working as an employee and I met up with a financial advisor. After going through a review with him, it seems like with my previous salary, it was impossible to retire by 45 which was my goal at that time. That’s when I realised that just by saving on the salary is not going to work simply because the inflation is going to wipe off all the interest generated through the bank as well as the annual increment. Thus, one of the option is to invest where the returns must meet my personal financial target.

FFN: What was your life like before investing and how is it now?

CC: Before investing, I was working very hard to make money. I can work 2 jobs at one time so that I can save up more money fort myself and my family. After learning how to invest, I am still working very hard, even harder than before. However, the difference is that I am financially free and I work hard because I simply love what I am doing.

FFN: How do you choose which stocks to invest in? What are some of your strategies?

CC: Good question. In short, view companies like a business, choose companies that have a competitive advantage, buy them when they are undervalue and sell them when they are overpriced. We have 2 main strategies: Value Investing and Value Investing Options Strategy (VIOs) where we generate passive income only using 15 mins per month.

FFN: What are some of the stocks in your portfolio currently?

CC: They are mainly in the banking and medical industry.

FFN: You started off as an NLP coach. How did you start a value investing training business?

CC: I started off as a NLP Trainer, not a NLP Coach. When I started NLP training, the intention is to provide a set of proven tools to help people reach their outcome. Through this journey, I realised that most of my participants have dreams to become financially free so that they have more time to do what they want to do. And if you look at our allocation of our time, almost everyone will spend one-third of their life working, the other one-third sleeping and the remaining one-third doing other things. If a person can be financially free, that will free up one-third of his life to do whatever he loves to do, not what others expect him to do. Thus, I started Mind Kinesis Value Investing Academy to support people in this journey.

FFN: What are the mistakes you have done pertaining to investing and what are the lessons learnt?

CC: The biggest mistake was that I was speculating on my entire savings previously thinking that I was investing. As a result, I lost all my savings in a few months in which I took years to save. I was trading at that time and was trying to speculate on market movements using technical analysis and a small portion of fundamental analysis. There were nice names given to trading methodologies but unfortunately as I looked back now, these methodologies are pure speculative in nature and don’t make logical sense for a simple reason – the price fluctuation of the shares are mostly emotional and not logical. In short term, price fluctuation do not reflect the performance of any business. Trying to make logic out of millions of emotional buying and selling is as good as coming out a methodology for buying lottery. Ask yourself this – how many people whom you know out there are speculating right now and are making money CONSISTENTLY and how much time are they spending each day? The key lesson is – Mr Market is there to serve you and not to instruct you!

FFN: What do you thing is the biggest misconception people have about money?

CC: Do people have misconception? I have unsure of that.

FFN: What is the one thing, in your opinion, do people need to succeed in investing?

CC: Invest, don’t speculate!

FFN: What are the habits one must follow to have a sound financial life?

CC: The habits are: (i) know your financial endpoint & review regularly, (ii) increase income & reduce expenses to have adequate money to invest, (iii) set aside money regularly to buy undervalue assets to generate passive income, (iv) repeat step (i) to (iii) and change accordingly until you reach your financial endpoint.

FFN: Give us an “insider look” of a day in your life from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep

CC: I work very hard in my business, I spent time with my family, I read, I exercise, I spent time connecting with my friends who are mostly my trainees and I sleep.

FFN: A parting shot for the readers…

CC: Investment Rule No. 1: Don’t Lose Money. And stay away from speculation.

If you are serious about learning about how you CAN GENERATE PASSIVE INCOME using only 15 mins per month, join us for a Free Value Investing Workshop at http://www.investment-in-stocks.com/free-investing-workshop where we run the FIRST Singapore Value Investing Programme Recommended by Mary Buffett, Internationally Acclaimed Author and Speaker of “Buffettology”, “The Tao of Warren Buffett”, “Management Secrets of Warren Buffett”.