One Prop Trader a Day - Everton Galves: Why I Take the Trades Everyone Says to Skip
One Prop Trader a Day - Episode 94
Everton Galves
I am Everton, I am 30, married for 11 years and a father of two, based in Curitiba, Brazil. These days I mainly trade USDJPY and Gold. I have grown to love Gold's price action and the liquidity and volatility of the late Asian session.
I got my first funded account in 2024, and since then it has been a cycle of managing, scaling and opening new accounts to secure payouts. My very first payout was 1,367 dollars. I took my family to the grocery store and we bought whatever we wanted without stressing over the prices. Seeing my wife and kids happy made me stop and think - this is real, it actually works, and I want more of it.
I failed a lot before this worked, easily seven to ten times. My single most expensive lesson was overconfidence. I convinced myself a setup was guaranteed, and it cost me a 200,000 dollar FTMO account. That was a painful lesson in respect for the market.
My lowest point lasted for weeks. A setup that used to make me 1,000 dollars a day suddenly kept losing. I would reset, analyse my mistakes, come back and lose again, and I spiralled into a feeling of constant failure. So I stepped away to dissect my entire system. I realised I was forcing high risk-reward trades with tight stops that kept getting swept, which was wrecking my mental health. I stripped away the complexity, lowered my expectations, and shifted to simple 1:1 and 1:2 trades. I made less per win, but I became consistent, and that is what saved my mindset.
Today I am a pure day trader working mainly off the 15-minute chart. My strategy is momentum: I look for a breakout, wait for a healthy pullback, and place a stop order just beyond the correction candle, aiming for a quick 1:1 or 1:2. I wake around 5:30 to 6, check the charts and set my levels, and my ideal window is the Asian open at night. With two kids, flexibility is everything, and because my system is simple I can comfortably manage and execute right from my phone when I need to.
People always say never take 1:1 trades because they are not worth it. I completely ignore that. Taking 1:1 trades keeps me consistent, keeps me profitable, and most importantly it protects my mental health. Feeling good and staying psychologically sound is worth far more to me than hunting unrealistic risk-reward ratios.
What separates me from someone who washed out at their third evaluation is nothing more than the determination to keep going until it works. There is no secret formula. If prop firms disappeared tomorrow I would still trade, without a doubt, because trading is a lifelong skill - learn capital management and risk control and you have a profession for life, with or without prop firms. And if I were handed a million-dollar account today, my first seven days would go entirely into getting comfortable with the lot sizing, building a cushion with very conservative trades before slowly scaling up.
Verified funded - the receipts
About the writer - Everton Galves
Everton Galves is a 30-year-old momentum day trader from Curitiba, Brazil, trading USDJPY and Gold and funded through prop firms including FTMO.
