From Dairy Farmer to Forex Trader

From a dairy farmer to a Forex trader, can you believe it? Well, that’s my story in a sentence. I want to talk about my background because I think it’s really important that you get to understand a little bit about me. Where I was from and where I’ve eventually got to so that it can help you become a trader if that’s what you want to be.

You see I don’t have a background in a market in terms of I have never worked in London or the New York Stock Exchange or anything like that. I don’t have a business degree as such, so I think it is a really important point to make that anyone can become a successful Forex Trader, if you have the right application and dedication and determination. So that’s the first point that I want to make because I don’t want you to think, “well, he’s been to business school, or his dad was a stock trader”, or anything like that because it’s not the case at all.

I was born in England but in 1995 I took a holiday/vacation to New Zealand and fell in love with the Country.

I was born on a dairy farm. My parents are dairy farmers and we had a herd of about 150 milking cows. My parents worked extremely hard in all weather and all conditions every day of the year. Starting at 5:00 a.m. and finishing at or around 6:00 or 7:00 p.m, seven days a week. It was very, very hard work. I learnt all about determination, the dedication, the perseverance, taking the knocks and the getting back up again.

I suppose that it was something as farmers you have no choice about. You see it doesn’t matter whether it is your birthday or Christmas day or if you are feeling a bit under the weather you’ve got to do the work. Looking back on my childhood and my upbringing, that was an amazing experience and learning curve and a work ethic that was installed in me from watching my parents and also grandparents working.

It’s something that I have been really conscious to carry through my working life and it’s definitely something that’s been very high priority within my Forex trading and also my coaching business as well. Honesty, hard work, good ethics, just telling the truth and helping people. When you do that you realise that it actually helps you learn and progress as well.

So, after falling in love with New Zealand in 1995 I decided I wanted to emigrate and in 1997 I arrived in New Zealand. I didn’t know a single person. Well, there was one person who I knew who was my boss but I had only met him for one afternoon about a year previous so you could really say I didn’t know anybody. I was on the other side of the world, in my very early twenties, with a couple suitcases and that was it. Off I went. That was a hard beginning. I suppose it was lonely to start with in some ways and not knowing anybody you you’ve got a sort of work your way up from the bottom and there’s only one way to go. However it was what I wanted to do. I always wanted to live in New Zealand from the first time I ever arrived here and I wanted to own a dairy farm. So they were my goals. By arriving on the plane to live I had already achieved the first goal.

So from there, I then decided to work on a farm to start with and eventually I built my way up through the system and I got to own my own dairy farm, which was an amazing achievement. I was very proud of the fact that I had achieved that so early on and at such a young age. It came from some perseverance again, it comes back to the same thing, you know, finding a way of making things work. Even though I am talking about my background in dairy farming I am sure you already can see how this can eventually lead to dedication and determination within the Forex market which came a number of years later.

What I then realised over time is that; yes I’d got to own my own dairy farm in New Zealand but the problem was is I was still working very hard, very long hours. Starting at 5:00 finishing probably around 7:00 in the evening so you know, sort of fourteen hour days, seven days a week.

I was doing all of the work myself and it is hard work. Although it is what I wanted to do it was very, very hard physically and mentally with no breaks. You don’t get a day off when you are farming. You can’t suddenly stop milking the cows because you want to go somewhere. It doesn’t happen. So the thing that I got to realise was that with a large amount of debt I was actually not in that much control over where I was heading.

The main things that affected me, in terms of my income, where things like the exchange rate with the New Zealand dollar against the U.S dollar, the payout of the milk, disease, limitation in terms of farm size, stocking numbers and the weather of course. These were all huge factors in whether or not you have a good or bad year and they were completely out of my control.

So a lot of things that affected my business back then were completely out of my control even though I had huge debt. When I think back on that as a Forex trader I have so much control. Sure I can’t control the market, but I can control so much in terms of when I enter a trade, when I exit, what position size I take etc. So I’ll talk about that more in a few chapters time when we start talking about the actual Forex trading.

However you can see how with very low set up costs in Forex trading you do actually have a lot of control. Whereas dairy farming with massive overheads, massive debt most of the things that affected my income where completely out of my control. I’ve got to be honest in saying it wasn’t really until I finished dairy farming did I actually see that.

Looking back on it, a lot of risk and lack of control with a business such as dairy farming. A lot of control and low risk and believe it or not low risk associated with Forex trading. Even though so many people will tell you it’s risky and it’s high risk it’s actually is not if you know how to trade correctly. Again, I’ll talk about more of that shortly.

So that was my background. I eventually achieved my goal of owning the farm. Yet only a couple of years later everything came crashing down. My wife was very ill at the time, we had a child, a boy who was around two years old and in the end I had to sell the farm. I actually lost half of everything because I went through a divorce. It was very hard of course, like anything like that would be. However, looking back on it, it opened up a complete new opportunity because once a farmer always a farmer, unfortunately. The problem is that most people stay in farming, or any industry for that matter, because they don’t know what else to do.

I was forced into something and at the time I had no idea what I was going to do. I had never heard of Forex. Yet, one morning while I was milking the cows I heard an advert on a radio station, on a sports station, and it was for a Forex course. Now I had no idea what Forex was and never heard of Forex really.

I had some idea about the New Zealand Dollar against the U.S. Dollar because that’s effectively as a dairy farmer how I was being paid, yet I had no idea about what Forex was. So anyway I thought, “well look, I don’t know what else I’m going to do”. Not long after finishing the farm I had my son to look after for the majority of the time by myself and so I needed to find something that was allowing me to work from home yet make an income and it needed to be something that was not farming related because I needed a break from farming.

I decided to take the course. It cost me over $5,000 New Zealand, which back then was a huge amount of money. The course was not that great but looking back on it, it got me into Forex trading. I instantly understood everything that the tutor was talking about and it really got me hooked on Forex trading. I got the bug, wanting to know more. You see I did many courses at the same time as that such as business courses, property courses and franchising courses. However it was the Forex course that was the one that really fascinated. It just seemed to be right.

I really didn’t know why at the time, but it just got me hooked. I was just excited by it and it seemed to be the perfect business. Of course, as we are going to find out very shortly, it’s a lot harder than it’s made out to be but at the time it just got me hooked.

So that’s my initial story of how I got into Forex trading. Next I’m going to talk more about my early days as a Forex trader. 

"To become a Profitable Forex Trader doesn’t require you to sit in front of your computer all day and night. You can have a life and still trade well."

Andrew Mitchem

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