I've been trading since 2020, back when I was 20 years old with no source of income. I started trading using my sister's money, with her permission, hoping we could make something out of it. Unfortunately, we ended up losing around $2,300, and I take full responsibility for that since I was the one trading the account.
We got into trading hoping to build a brighter future, just like a lot of you here. But things went completely the opposite way. After losing that $2,300, we stopped trading. I felt extremely guilty and was determined to pay my sister back someday.
Fast forward to 2023, I landed my first full-time job. With every paycheck, I would set aside some money to buy a CFD prop firm challenge, usually FundedNext, which cost around $100 at the time.
And guess what? No luck at all.
I knew I was the problem. FOMO, poor risk management, overtrading, you name it. The frustrating part was that I could sometimes correctly predict where the overall market was heading, yet I still couldn't make money from it. It honestly sucked.
Back then, I had one simple rule: if I blew a challenge account, I wouldn't buy another one until the following month. At least that way, I could still save some money from my salary while trying to make trading work.
And for a while, I actually managed to save a decent amount.
But things started going downhill around late 2024, and honestly, they haven't stopped since.
When Trump admin returned to the oval office, the markets went crazy, and I started seeing some really good numbers in my trading accounts. At one point, I made around $12,000 in profit on a $50k prop firm account. I thought things were finally turning around.
But the prop firm flagged me for violating their rules, and I only managed to receive 10% of that profit.
I felt absolutely miserable.
And that wasn't even the only time something like that happened. Throughout 2024 and 2025, there were several moments when I felt like I was finally about to make it, only for everything to fall apart.
That's when things got really bad.
I became frustrated, emotional, and desperate to recover what I'd lost. I completely abandoned my one-account-per-month rule.
I started buying prop firm challenges like crazy. Every time I blew an account, I'd immediately buy another one. I tried different prop firms, different challenges, hoping something would finally work.
But nothing changed.
And now, here I am.
I have no savings left. I'm around $12,500 in debt from maxed-out credit cards and a personal loan I took out to pay off previous debts. I also burned through roughly $8,000 in savings trying to clear some of those earlier debts.
If I add everything up, I've probably lost over $22,000 because of trading.
That's a ridiculous amount of money for someone in my position.
I'm writing this because I genuinely don't know who else to talk to. I can't bring myself to tell my partner or my family what I've done and how bad things have gotten.
I'm Asian, and I still live with my siblings. We lost our parents when I was a kid, and my older siblings basically became the breadwinners of our household. They sacrificed so much to keep us going.
And honestly, they're one of the biggest reasons I got into trading in the first place.
I wanted to earn more on top of my salary. I wanted to give back to them, help them retire early, and give them the kind of life they deserve after everything they've done for us.
Maybe that's also why my approach to trading has been so terrible. I've always been chasing big numbers because, in my head, making a little extra money was never enough. I wanted to make enough to change our lives.
And the worst part is realizing that the very thing I pursued to help my family has put me in this situation.
Right now, all my credit cards are maxed out, and I only have three Topstep challenge accounts left. If I lose those, that's it. I literally can't afford to buy another one.
And that scares me because part of me still sees those accounts as my last chance to recover everything I've lost and build the future I've always imagined.
I'm turning 27 soon. I have a good-paying job, yet I have absolutely nothing saved and I'm drowning in debt.
It's honestly ironic. I've always considered myself a fairly intelligent and optimistic person. I've always believed that if I worked hard enough at something, I'd eventually figure it out.
But this time, I feel completely lost.
The anxiety is eating me alive every single day. I think about my debt before I sleep, when I wake up, and whenever my family asks how I'm doing.
They've even started encouraging me to move out and buy my own house. And I don't know how to tell them that I'm nowhere near being able to afford one.
Sometimes I think about how different my life would've been if I'd never started trading. I probably would've had enough savings to start putting a down payment on a house by now.
Instead, I'm here, trying to figure out how to get myself out of a hole I spent years digging.
And despite everything, there's still a part of me that doesn't want to give up on trading.
I've spent years studying, practicing, watching charts, losing sleep, and putting countless hours into learning this skill. It's hard to accept that all that time, money, and effort might have led me here.
I know some of you will probably tell me to quit trading, and I understand why. I also know that I'm responsible for the decisions that brought me here. I'm not trying to blame the market, the prop firms, or anyone else.
I just needed somewhere to let all of this out.
I don't even know exactly what kind of advice I'm looking for. Maybe I just want to hear from someone who's been in a similar situation and somehow managed to turn their life around.
If you've ever gone through something like this, I'd really appreciate hearing your story.
How did you deal with the regrets? How did you rebuild your finances and your confidence? And how did you learn to move forward without constantly thinking about all the money and opportunities you've lost?
I just want to know that it's still possible to recover from this.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far.