You want to improve your technical analysis skills. How can you identify the areas that need work?

1 Assess your strengths and weaknesses

To improve your technical analysis skills, it is important to honestly assess your strengths and weaknesses. Reviewing past trades, journaling your thoughts and emotions, and tracking performance metrics can help you do this. Ask yourself questions such as what technical tools and strategies work best for you, what common mistakes or biases you make, how you handle risk, uncertainty, and volatility, and how you cope with stress, frustration, and fear. In this way, you can determine the areas in which you are proficient and those that require improvement or avoidance.

2 Seek feedback and evaluation

The second step to improve your technical analysis skills is to seek feedback and evaluation from others. You can find mentors, coaches, or experts who can offer you guidance, advice, or critique. Additionally, you can join online communities, forums, or groups of traders who share your interests and goals. When asking for feedback, consider your technical analysis methods and assumptions, trade setups, entries, exits and management, risk-reward ratio, position sizing, money management and trading psychology. Through this process of exchanging perspectives and insights with other traders, you will be able to discover new ways to improve your technical analysis skills.

3 Experiment and test

Experimenting and testing different technical tools and strategies is the third step to improve your technical analysis skills. You can use demo accounts, backtesting, or paper trading platforms to practice and analyze your trades without risking real money, as well as historical data, charts, or simulators to test your hypotheses and scenarios. For example, you can experiment with different time frames, markets, instruments, indicators, oscillators, overlays, chart patterns, trends, breakouts, trading styles, systems, and rules. Through this process of trial and error you can discover what works best for you and refine your technical analysis skills accordingly.

4 Learn and update

Improving your technical analysis skills requires regular learning and updating of knowledge and skills. Reading books, articles, blogs, or newsletters that cover technical analysis topics can help you stay informed about the field. Watching videos, podcasts, webinars, or courses that teach technical analysis concepts and techniques can also be beneficial. These materials can provide you with information on the basic principles and assumptions of technical analysis, its history and evolution, the latest trends and developments, as well as best practices and tips from successful technical analysts. By doing this, you can stay up-to-date with the changing market conditions and dynamics.

5 Review and improve

The fifth step to improve your technical analysis skills is to review and improve your performance and results regularly. Setting realistic and measurable goals, tracking progress, and evaluating outcomes are all important. Additionally, feedback, evaluation, experimentation, and learning can help make adjustments and improvements to your technical analysis skills. For instance, you can review and improve your technical analysis accuracy, trading profitability, risk-reward ratio, trading confidence, and satisfaction. Doing so allows you to monitor and measure your technical analysis skills while also celebrating achievements and overcoming challenges.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?