One Prop Trader a Day – Deepak Mishra: I Could Not Afford a Challenge, So I Competed for One

One Prop Trader a Day – Episode 115

What do you do when you want a funded account but cannot afford to buy a single challenge? Deepak Mishra, 19 and in the third semester of a BBA in Bihar, entered the free monthly competitions instead, lost for the better part of a year, then finished 63rd at FundedNext and second at Blueberry Funded. In this interview, he explains the 5,000 he had saved since Class 9 and lost in Class 11, the three years he spent looking for a holy grail strategy that does not exist, and why he now waits for the retest rather than the breakout.

My name is Deepak Mishra, I’m 19 years old and from Bihar, India. I’m currently in the third semester of my BBA. I’ve been learning and trading the markets for around three years. I mainly focus on XAUUSD, XAGUSD, Nasdaq (NQ) and the Indian stock market, although I have explored many other markets during my journey. I’m still not a consistently profitable trader, so I don’t want to present myself as something I’m not. My journey so far has been more about failures, learning and slowly understanding what it actually takes to become a trader.

I started learning about trading around November 2023. At that time, some people around me were talking about trading, and I saw my friend saying that they made around 15,000 from it. My first thought was simply: “If he can do it, maybe I can do it too.” I didn’t understand how difficult trading actually was. I thought making money from the market was just about learning a strategy and clicking the right buttons. That was clearly far from reality.

My first trade was in the Indian stock market, in Reliance. Initially I made a profit of about 256, but ultimately I lost about 5,000. The painful thing wasn’t just about losing money. That 5,000 was what I had been saving from around Class 9 or 10, and I lost it during Class 11. Probably it was my first tough lesson.

When I began learning about forex and prop firms, I didn’t really have the capital to keep buying challenges again and again. So I discovered the monthly competitions that a few firms hosted. I thought: “If I cannot afford a challenge, let me compete and at least earn an account or some prize through performance.” I’ve been participating in these competitions around 2024 and 2025 and have been through numerous failures. It took me ages to finally win anything. But then things picked up. In December I performed at around 69.74 percent and managed to reach Rank 63. Later on, in a Blueberry Funded competition in February 2025, I was Rank 2 and won 1,000 dollars. These were important benchmarks, not because I had instantly become profitable, but because they showed me that my effort was yielding some results.

My biggest struggle has been risk management and patience. Mostly, my blunders come in the form of position sizing, entering prematurely and not sticking to my daily loss limit. At times I’m in the correct area, but instead of waiting for the confirmation from price, I enter before it actually gives confirmation. I tend to size in the wrong way, and one trade blows up into multiple bad trades. The urge to recoup a lost trade is also something I have battled. I understand that it is sometimes better to just sit out and do nothing.

In terms of money, the most expensive lesson was nothing of that sort.

In these three years I’ve pretty much tried everything: stocks, options, futures, forex, commodities, varying strategies, concepts, and an endless stream of YouTube videos and reading up a dozen and more strategies. For years I believed there must be one single holy grail strategy that would make it work finally. Eventually I realized something. The market doesn’t behave in exactly the same way, so no matter how many new strategies I implement, they aren’t going to help. I needed to simplify it.

How trading has affected me mentally is quite the darkest part of my story. I belong to a village in Bihar, and to be honest there are not many people who really get trading, let alone know about prop trading. Hence this whole journey was often very lonesome. I’d lose an account, smash my daily stops, make the same mistakes repeatedly, then retreat to my room and fight this battle alone. And during all of this, life also threw several personal challenges my way, especially during 2024, which was personally a very hard year. But through all this, I learned. I became a much more mature, emotionally stable person than I was when I first started. I got a grasp of risk management, R:R, position sizing, my emotional behaviour towards the market and how it can lead me into disastrous decisions. Still a work in progress, though.

I’ve mostly participated in competitions and challenges organised by FundedNext, Blueberry Funded and FundingPips. My experience with prop firms hasn’t really been about purchasing challenges directly, rather it has been more about earning them, or proving my capability without paying a lot initially.

My trading style is currently quite simple. I mainly focus on price action and volume. I identify major levels of interest, keep an eye on sessions and check the session lows and highs, and wait for price action to occur around my areas of interest. I don’t believe in using a bunch of indicators to signal what the market is supposed to be doing. A significant shift that occurred in my journey is the movement from “What I think the market should do?” to “What is the market showing me right now?”

Being a BBA student, a part of my day revolves around academic and supplementary studies in finance, equity research, and preparation for the CFA Level 1 while I become eligible to sit for the exam. When it comes to trading, I primarily focus my attention during the New York session, and occasionally glance at London if there is sufficient free time. On the weekends I typically immerse myself in deeper market study, reviewing charts, researching individual companies, analysing my past trades, and seeking to understand the week’s proceedings. I’m also keenly interested in the potential applications of AI in finance and markets.

A frequent error I’ve found myself making in the recent past has been about entering the market straight on the breakout. For instance, seeing price breach a key level might make me jump in quickly, thinking “this is it, the trade is on”. Then price could simply swing back to take liquidity, fake out, or retest the broken level. Through these experiences I’ve learned that catching the initial burst isn’t essential. I now try to wait and let the price give more information, such as liquidity being taken, some form of consolidation, confirmation, or a well-executed retest, before committing to an entry. This is an ongoing learning process.

While I haven’t yet achieved a state of consistent profitability in trading, I have had several significant accomplishments that hold considerable value to me. My most impactful achievements to date are the FundedNext December competition, where I achieved 69.74 percent with a Rank 63, and the Blueberry Funded competition in February 2025, where I secured Rank 2 and won 1,000 dollars.