One Prop Trader a Day - Narayan Verma: Losses Are the Tuition Fees You Pay
Narayan Verma
Narayan Verma is a 23-year-old trader from India, now based in a small town on the Canadian border. He once lost his entire college fees in a single trade. Here is his story, in his own words.
My name is Narayan Verma and I’m 23 years old. I’m from India – I finished high school there, then moved to Canada in 2022 to study for a diploma in maths and computer languages, which I completed in 2025. I mostly trade gold, EUR/USD, AUD/USD, silver, and some index pairs.
I passed my funding challenge in 2025. What changed was not really the money – it was what came with it: more discipline, and more peace in my life. Honestly, by the time I had figured trading out, most of my desire to buy things with the money had already gone. But the feeling of financial freedom is something that is worth it.
Getting there took years. I was first introduced to trading back in India in 2021, but I only started properly in 2023, with my own money, trading CFDs. For two years it was the same cycle repeating: I would scale my account to double, then blow it up. Read books, learn every way I could, save money, put it back into a live account, take a few profits, and blow it again. That cycle ran for 24 months. One thing stayed with me from a book I read in 2023, The Art of Currency Trading: losses are the tuition fees you pay. So I knew that one day it would all work out, and all the hard work would pay off. And whenever I looked at my friends and the people around me, it kept me going – I was not going to end up like that.
My lowest point I still remember exactly. It was 15 May 2024. I was working double shifts, day and night, to save up my college fees, and I put all of that money into my trading account. I still had two weeks before the deadline, and I thought I would scale it for two weeks before I paid. Then came the Fed rate cuts. I had not checked the red-folder news, and all of my college fees blew up right in front of my eyes. I was shattered. I could not process what had happened to me. I was on my night shift at the gas station and I just sat there, numb, the whole night. Even then, I never considered quitting – all I could focus on was getting my college fees paid.
My most expensive lesson cost me almost $3,000, and it came from the same place. I traded gold into Fed rate news. The market was right; it did exactly what it was supposed to do. My risk management in that trade was not. I made a new rule out of it: never catch a falling knife. And yes, trading affected me mentally – one hundred percent. There was a straight two-year stretch where I ruined my own mental and emotional peace.
It is much simpler now. My approach is a mix of fundamental, sentimental, and technical analysis. Some trades are on the hourly, some are short-term scalps, and some come off weekly analysis. And I have become a lot better at losing.
I live in Fonthill, a small town on the border between the US and Canada, with trails and nature all around me. I wake at 6:30am and head out on the trail, back by 7:15. After a bath I am at my setup by 8. Until 8:30 I build my trading plan: I check what the market did through the London and Asian sessions, mark my levels, look at the trend and which assets are in play, and check the volume. From 8:30 I look for trades, and only until 12pm – once the London session is over and the major overlap is done, half the volume drops out, so I exit my positions there. Then I make brunch and go to help my uncle with his business, and I am back home around 7:30pm. In the evening I check the Asian session for any setup in gold, read a book, talk with my family in India, and I am in bed by 11:30.
The popular advice I completely ignore is “trade only one pair and one timeframe.” That is complete nonsense, from what I have understood in this business. You should trade at least five different asset types, so you are not staring at one asset all the time and forcing setups that are not there. More assets means more real opportunities.
Honestly, I do not spend much energy making people understand what I do. My family is good with it, my friends are good with it, so I really do not care how anyone else sees this business. I spent years learning it and it works for me – that is all I want. It changed my lifestyle completely. Trading is a very simple lifestyle, I guess: no crap in your life. You have to keep everything very simple, your relationships included, because anything not good in your life will reflect on your charts. So I keep everything sorted.
What separates me from someone who washes out at their third evaluation is discipline of mindset. Before entering any trade, you must already have decided: I will cut this here. The moment price gets there and you are still in the position – that is the point that separates a profitable trader from a losing one. After that point, one is still in the trade hoping for a reversal, while the profitable one cuts the loss and moves on to the next. If I could tell myself one thing a year ago: take things slowly, you have enough time. One good year is enough to change your life. Do not do too many things at once. If prop firms disappeared tomorrow I would still be trading – I trade my live accounts as well, and my goal is financial freedom, so I would be happy trading my own account. And whether it is $100 or $1,000,000, my approach to money stays the same. I would trade exactly the same risk management: find a setup, look at the economics, the fundamentals and the technicals, and place the trade. Hit the target – good, move on to the next. Take a loss – good, move on to the next.
About the writer – Narayan Verma
Narayan Verma is a 23-year-old trader originally from India, now based in Fonthill, Ontario, where he moved in 2022 to study maths and computer languages. He trades gold, EUR/USD, AUD/USD, silver, and index pairs, blending fundamental, sentiment, and technical analysis across scalps, intraday, and weekly setups. After two years of blowing and rebuilding his own accounts – including the day he lost his college fees to a Fed rate cut – he passed his funding challenge in 2025 with Funding Pips, and now trades on discipline, strict risk management, and the belief that losses are simply tuition.
