Kenneth Kam: “Successful trading depends more on mindset than skills”

Published in late 2016, ‘The Equilibrium – Training the Money Mindset’ highlights some key experiences of Kenneth Kam’s unique journey to achieve equilibrium in trading through what he describes as mindset mastery. News on Sunday seized the opportunity to interview the successful social entrepreneur. He not only shared his story but also his views on social enterprise and trading.

Kenneth Kam is multi-lingual and is also a multi-talented individual who has a strong flair for Mathematics and Computer Science. Among many other traits, his self-discipline greatly helped him in becoming the successful trader he is today. Kenneth began his trading journey with commodities since 1990, after the completion of his National Service and study at Singapore polytechnic. It was only in the late 1990s, upon the deregulation of the foreign exchange market, that he started Forex trading on a part-time basis.

While trading in Forex on the side, he continued working full-time as a marketing professional, gaining experience and building a career that spanned many industries. It is in 2011 that he decided to go into full-time trading. He started his Facebook page and developed his learning platform to share his applied knowledge, the lessons he learnt, and to explore the abilities needed to achieve financial success. This has expanded into the Forex Education and Capital Appreciation Program e-learning system, where he shares his knowledge of how to grow capital with Forex.

Kenneth had humble beginnings like many current successful people around the world. He grew up in a small house in Singapore. The social entrepreneur learnt many life lessons from his parents, especially his mother. Indeed Kenneth’s mother taught him to never give up, be generous and always aim for the moon. These values guided the Forex trader throughout his journey.

It is in fact an event in his childhood that drove him to engage in charitable activities, namely the establishment of the Kenn Foundation, which has also been launched in Mauritius. As he tells us, he strongly believes in giving back to society. “I believe that when I give, I receive. It stems from an event when I was young. When I was five, my mother brought me to the wet market. So I thought why she would drag me to a smelly market with stinky fish on hooks and meats splattering blood all over the floor. So I was protesting. When we came back from the market, we came across a beggar on the street. This was a life changing situation for me. So I asked my mother why do some people need to beg for money because aren’t everyone supposed to live comfortably in their homes with food ready on the table? I was a bit naïve as a young boy. She told me that sometimes people fall out from society, they cannot work because of health or certain circumstances and that’s why they resort to begging. I was thus filled with sadness for the man. I asked my mother for some money but she told me we don’t give to beggars because we would be encouraging them to ask for more, but I protested. I told her to give me and I would pay her back when I am older. So she gave me some coins to give to the beggar and there the magic happened. I saw gratitude in his eyes and a smile on his face. That brought warmth to my heart and from that day on, I became addicted to giving because of the adrenaline that flew through my body after giving. Till today, there is something in me that tells me that I must always give.”

In his book, Kenneth explains that successful trading depends more on mindset than on skills. “Successful trading, if you break up into the science of understanding of how the trader is successful in what he does, it goes down to 10% on skills and experience. This 10% will include my ability to do my fundamental as well as technical analysis and my ability to read the market. The other 10% is luck. But I don’t believe in luck. I believe that opportunity favours the prepared mind. For me, when opportunity passes by me, I grab it. People around me think I am lucky but I was only prepared. So that makes 20% in all. But what is the 80% that makes a successful trader? It is what I believe is mindset mastery. And what is mindset mastery? It is the ability to switch on and off your fear, your greed, your procrastination, and whatever gives you problem as a human being through emotions. So, if we are able to switch on and off our emotions accordingly, then we will get mindset mastery and become successful traders. Most traders lose money because when they are in the trading situation they become fearful, they become greedy and are overcome with thoughts and have many emotional distractions. So good traders should master mindset mastery so that they can become successful traders,” he explains.

So how can his book ‘The Equilibrium: Training The Money Mindset’ help not only traders but people from all walks of life? “Anyone reading this book, not only traders, and understanding my journey as a Forex trader discovering mindset mastery, would realise that with mindset mastery they can become a good mother, father, a good lawyer, a good doctor, and anybody they want to be. Because when we master our mindset, we become the best of whom we can be and fulfil our destinies.”

Kenneth Kam does not believe that social enterprise is not very popular in Mauritius. “Social entrepreneurship is basically business done to benefit society. I don’t think we should say it is not very popular in the island because I can see social entrepreneurship flourishing in Mauritius. Perhaps we can see that the awareness of social entrepreneurship is not very widespread in the country. The question is how do we make social entrepreneurship better known? We’ve got to learn from the best social enterprises around the world and models that work.”