Fundamental vs technical analysis: do you have to choose?

Fundamental analysis studies the economic drivers: interest rates, inflation, growth, jobs, company earnings. It answers “where is price going, and why?” — on substance and the medium/long term.

Technical analysis studies price itself: trend, structure, support/resistance, indicators. It answers “when to enter and exit?” — on timing and trade management.

Fundamentals give context and the underlying direction, but they're bad at timing: an “overvalued” asset can stay that way for months. Technicals give precise entry points, but are blind to event risk (a news print can invalidate the prettiest setup).

Used alone, each approach has a blind spot. Fundamentals without timing make you enter too early; technicals without context make you trade against a powerful macro flow.

The pros' top-down approach: macro first (what regime are we in? rates rising or falling? dollar strong or weak?) to choose the DIRECTION and the assets. Then technicals, to find the precise entry in that direction.

Concretely: if macro argues for a strong dollar, you look for technical setups to buy the dollar — not the opposite. You align your technical timing with the fundamental wind.

Combining doesn't mean stacking at random. You must check that your macro filter actually improves your technical strategy. GetBacktest lets you replay on real data while keeping the macro context in view (Macro Context tab), and measure whether adding the fundamental filter raises your expectancy.

As always: test, don't guess. The full macro dashboard (rates, inflation, jobs, yields) is on /macro to help you define the regime before applying your technicals.