How My ₹25,000 Profit Turned Into ₹13 Lakh Loss? | Losses & Lessons Ep-20

In this latest episode of Losses & Lessons, today we sit with Sanjay - a quietly honest, hard-working QA professional from Rourkela - whose stock-market story is equal parts luck, pain and hard lessons. He came to trading to “double money,” chased quick wins on friends’ tips, rode a few good days and then learned the most expensive lesson of all: when you treat other people’s confidence as your trading plan, you lose more than money. This episode is not a how-to. It’s a how-not-to. We let Sanjay speak for himself — from first tiny wins to heavy losses, from using savings and loans to buying a new phone with trading profits, and to the real moment when the losses felt too much to bear. Sanjay started small. A few thousand here and there, a 20% day that felt like magic, and a friend who said “this will double.” That first win fast-tracked his confidence. He moved from ₹10k → ₹12k and spent the profit on social things — the psychological effect was immediate: one small win convinced him he’d cracked the code. This is the classic confidence trap. A couple of green days become proof that risk is smaller than it really is. When losses started piling up, Sanjay doubled down to “recover.” He used savings, broke an FD, took personal loans from his salary account and even spent on a new phone after one big 25k day. That’s the behavioral needle: after one big win, we convince ourselves larger stakes equal larger returns - ignoring that markets don’t reward confidence, they redistribute it. The episode gets painful when he admits how bad it got. High EMIs (₹45,000), credit-card debt, missed payments, and a day where the shock of loss led to thoughts of not being able to go on. He credits a friend’s timely call for snapping him back - a reminder that losses can become crises in the life behind the trades. We don’t dramatize this - we acknowledge it and stress how real the consequences are. What changed? The small choices. Instead of jumping back into heavy positions, Sanjay started studying: options basics, open interest, volume, PCR, support/resistance. He began paper trading, kept a trade journal (entry, exit, size, emotion), and reduced lot sizes. Most importantly, he started treating risk as the primary variable — not profit. Those changes didn’t make him rich overnight. But they stopped the rapid destruction of capital. He recovered parts of previous losses, learned how to read setups, and now plans to return to real-money trading only after consistent profitable paper trading and months of single-lot discipline. That’s the slow, hard work most creators won’t film - but it’s the only reliable route back. Watch this Losses & Lessons podcast till the end to understand how a loss making trader thinks thoughout his journey, the mistakes made and the thoughts that are stuck. Fill out the form to appear in "Losses & Lessons" Podcast - https://shorturl.at/8ChN4 Have you been scammed? File your complaint at - https://aseemjuneja.in/ Install Stock Pathshala for LIVE classes and Webinars now: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codeclinic.stockpathshala&hl=en_IN iOS App: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/stock-pathshala/id6566178182 Join Our Whatsapp Group: https://www.whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va5uiyqGufIvVfGbnG1m 0:00 — Introduction 0:11 — Sanjay’s early wins and first confusion about options 4:04 — Debt and EMIs revealed 6:21 — The first real profit day? 9:00 — Escalation: increasing lot sizes & risky bets 21:02 — The ₹25,000 day and the phone-buying moment? 28:04 — Realisation: where profit actually comes from? 31:41 — Turning point: learning, course-buying, and the trade journal 36:02 — Timeline of loans and recovery attempts 44:44 — P&L review: cumulative losses and brokerage 53:03 — Mental health moment 51:41 — Plan forward: Paper trading, single-lot discipline, and slow scaling 56:12 — Closing thoughts — advice for new traders