Top 12 Trading Assistant Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the fast-paced world of trading, a resume that cuts through the noise matters. Showcasing the right trading assistant skills not only signals competence, it plants you squarely in the yes pile.
Trading Assistant Skills
1. Excel
Excel is Microsoft’s powerhouse for organizing, analyzing, and modeling data. In trading, it pulls weight across pricing, P&L tracking, reconciliations, and quick visuals that turn rows into decisions.
Why It's Important
For a Trading Assistant, Excel speeds up analysis, supports scenario testing, and turns messy data into clean signals. It becomes the scratchpad, the calculator, and the live dashboard—often all at once.
How to Improve Excel Skills
Sharpen your edge by going beyond basics:
Advanced Formulas: Nail nested logic, dynamic ranges, array formulas, and functions used in financial modeling.
Data Analysis and Visualization: Build reliable PivotTables, slicers, and charts that tell a story at a glance.
VBA and Macros: Automate repetitive workflows, create custom functions, and tighten processes.
Data Import and Management: Pull data from text, CSV, databases, and APIs. Clean it quickly. Keep it tidy.
Power Query and Power Pivot: Transform large datasets and model relationships for multi-table analysis without grinding your machine to a halt.
Focus on repeatable processes and templates. Faster, fewer errors, more time for real work.
How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume
2. Bloomberg Terminal
Bloomberg Terminal delivers real-time market data, pricing, news, analytics, messaging, and trading tools—built for speed and depth.
Why It's Important
It’s a single pane of glass for markets. A Trading Assistant can track instruments, monitor flows, price risk, and react quickly, all with reputable data and tools that the desk trusts.
How to Improve Bloomberg Terminal Skills
Make the terminal work the way you think:
Custom Dashboards: Organize screens around your asset class, watchlists, news filters, and analytics. Fewer keystrokes, more signal.
Advanced Alerts: Set targeted, layered alerts for price moves, news, or events tied to your coverage list.
Integrations: Use APIs and data exports to feed models, trackers, and blotters. Keep databases in sync.
Focused Training: Build role-specific terminal workflows. Practice with real scenarios you’ll face under time pressure.
Decision Support: Pair analytics, fair value tools, and relative-value screens with pre-set templates that match your strategies.
Small workflow tweaks compound. Your speed shows when the tape rips.
How to Display Bloomberg Terminal Skills on Your Resume
3. Python
Python is a flexible programming language with rich libraries for data work, modeling, and automation—perfect for turning raw market feeds into working tools.
Why It's Important
It handles large datasets, glues APIs together, and powers backtests and production scripts. Quick to write, powerful enough to scale.
How to Improve Python Skills
Build skills that ship real results:
Financial Libraries: Use pandas, numpy, matplotlib for the core; add TA-Lib for technicals and backtrader/backtesting frameworks for strategy research.
Market Data APIs: Work with providers like Alpha Vantage or Yahoo Finance. Parse, cache, and validate the data you ingest.
Databases: Store time series and trades in SQLite or PostgreSQL; consider MongoDB for schemaless data. Index smartly.
Machine Learning: Apply scikit-learn for classic models; use TensorFlow/Keras if the problem truly warrants deep learning.
Optimization: Tune parameters with SciPy. Separate in-sample and out-of-sample cleanly to avoid fooling yourself.
Execution: Connect to broker APIs (e.g., Interactive Brokers, Alpaca). Implement throttling, retries, and logging.
Risk Controls: Hard stops, max drawdown checks, position limits. Bake them in, don’t bolt them on.
Projects and Reviews: Build end-to-end pipelines and share code for feedback. Iterate relentlessly.
Ship small tools often. Learn by wiring them into real workflows.
How to Display Python Skills on Your Resume
4. SQL
SQL is the language of relational databases. It lets you query, transform, and aggregate the mountains of data sitting behind reports and dashboards.
Why It's Important
Trading runs on data. With SQL, a Trading Assistant can pull clean extracts, build accurate metrics, and respond to ad-hoc questions without waiting on someone else’s pipeline.
How to Improve SQL Skills
Think accuracy first, speed second, then scale:
Fundamentals: Joins, GROUP BY, CASE, subqueries, constraints. Know what the optimizer prefers.
Deliberate Practice: Solve varied query problems and refactor them for readability.
Analytics Features: Window functions, CTEs, pivoting. Essential for time series and cohort-style views.
Performance: Indexing, explain plans, avoiding unnecessary scans. Write queries that won’t buckle under load.
Data Modeling: Understand normalization, star schemas, and partitioning. Good structure makes queries trivial.
Stay Current: Follow database communities and release notes for your specific engine.
Clean SQL reduces confusion and rework. Your future self will thank you.
How to Display SQL Skills on Your Resume
5. MATLAB
MATLAB is a numerical computing environment favored for matrix math, signal processing, and rapid prototyping of models.
Why It's Important
For trading, it helps with quantitative research, risk modeling, and backtesting, especially when math-heavy workflows need speed and clarity.
How to Improve MATLAB Skills
Build around real market tasks:
- Data Access and Management: Use datafeed and database tools to bring in real-time and historical market data; standardize it for analysis.
- Analysis and Visualization: Lean on Financial Toolbox and robust plotting to surface patterns and stress outcomes.
- Algorithm Development: Prototype strategies, optimize parameters, and backtest reproducibly with clear reporting.
- Execution Interface: Create simple apps with App Designer to monitor signals and manage orders.
- Connectivity: Tie into broker/trading platforms with trading toolboxes and APIs to close the loop from research to execution.
Document each step. Reproducibility beats memory every time.
How to Display MATLAB Skills on Your Resume
6. R
R is a language built for statistics and visualization. It shines in time series analysis, forecasting, and tidy data workflows.
Why It's Important
A Trading Assistant can use R to explore signals, build predictive models, and validate strategies with rigorous statistical tools.
How to Improve R Skills
Target the workflows used on real desks:
Core Proficiency: Data structures, tidyverse, vectorization. Write clean, pipe-friendly code.
Financial Data Handling: Packages like quantmod, TTR, and tidyquant simplify ingestion and transformation.
Time Series: xts/zoo for structure; forecast and fable for modeling; tsibble for tidy time series.
Quant Strategies: Explore factor models and risk frameworks; use quantstrat/blotter for backtesting.
Machine Learning: caret and tidymodels for modeling pipelines with strict train/test discipline.
Practice and Community: Work on real datasets, publish notebooks, and learn from active R communities.
Make the analysis reproducible, and your results defensible.
How to Display R Skills on Your Resume
7. VBA
VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) extends Excel and other Office tools with automation and custom logic—perfect for shaving time off repetitive, error-prone tasks.
Why It's Important
On a busy desk, VBA turns manual steps into one-click routines, tightens controls, and standardizes reports. Less variance, more confidence.
How to Improve VBA Skills
Aim for robust, maintainable automations:
Excel Object Model: Navigate workbooks, ranges, charts, and events fluently.
Debugging and Error Handling: Use breakpoints, watches, and structured error handling. Fail gracefully, log clearly.
Automated Analysis: Build scripts for data collection, cleaning, and report assembly that run reliably.
External Data: Connect with files, databases, and web endpoints where appropriate.
Performance: Minimize screen updating, use arrays, and reduce worksheet I/O.
User Forms: Create simple, usable forms to enforce clean inputs and guided workflows.
Iteration: Keep a backlog of improvements; refactor as needs evolve.
Ship small utilities that the team actually uses. Adoption is the real metric.
How to Display VBA Skills on Your Resume
8. Tableau
Tableau turns raw data into dashboards and visuals that people actually understand. Perfect for surfacing trends and outliers fast.
Why It's Important
A Trading Assistant can compress complex market data into interactive views that answer questions in seconds, not meetings.
How to Improve Tableau Skills
Design for clarity under pressure:
Advanced Visuals: Build charts that fit markets—candlesticks, heatmaps, box plots, custom tooltips that matter.
Real-Time Feeds: Connect to live data where possible. Keep extracts fresh, schedule updates sensibly.
Interactivity: Use parameters, actions, and drill-downs to make dashboards exploratory, not static walls of ink.
Analytics Pane: Trend lines, forecasts, clustering—use them to guide the eye, not overwhelm it.
Community and Practice: Rebuild public dashboards, solicit feedback, iterate quickly.
Less decoration, more signal. Your end users are racing the clock.
How to Display Tableau Skills on Your Resume
9. QuickBooks
QuickBooks is accounting software built for tracking money in and out—expenses, invoices, payroll, reconciliation. Simple, reliable.
Why It's Important
For Trading Assistants in smaller firms or hybrid roles, it tightens recordkeeping, speeds month-end, and reduces compliance headaches.
How to Improve QuickBooks Skills
Focus on accuracy and automation:
Bank Feeds: Automate imports to cut manual entry and mismatches.
Integrations: Sync with inventory, CRM, or trading ops where appropriate to keep books aligned.
Custom Reports: Tailor P&L, cash flow, and project/desk-level reporting to the metrics your team watches.
Invoicing: Standardize templates, use recurring schedules, and track collections closely.
Security: Enforce strong access controls and two-factor authentication.
Training: Periodically review features and workflows so the team uses the tool well.
Feedback Loop: Adjust chart of accounts and processes based on actual operational needs.
Clean books, fewer surprises. Everyone sleeps better.
How to Display QuickBooks Skills on Your Resume
10. Salesforce
Salesforce is a cloud CRM that organizes contacts, activity, pipelines, and analytics—great for client and prospect workflows that tie back to trading.
Why It's Important
It centralizes relationships and communication, tracks opportunities, and surfaces insights that shape priorities on the desk.
How to Improve Salesforce Skills
Make it fit your process, not the other way around:
Customize: Adapt objects, fields, and page layouts to reflect your asset classes, coverage lists, and compliance needs.
Integrate: Connect to trading and market data tools; use MuleSoft or native connectors to sync key fields.
Automate: Build flows for data quality checks, notifications, follow-ups, and report schedules.
Train: Create role-specific playbooks and refreshers so adoption sticks as features evolve.
When done right, Salesforce becomes the source of truth, not just another system.
How to Display Salesforce Skills on Your Resume
11. Eikon
Eikon, from Refinitiv (an LSEG business), provides real-time market data, news, analytics, and trading tools used widely across buy and sell sides.
Why It's Important
It delivers trusted data and deep analytics across asset classes. A Trading Assistant can monitor instruments, scan news, and extract series for models without leaving the platform.
How to Improve Eikon Skills
Center your setup around your coverage:
- Platform Familiarity: Learn navigation, hotkeys, and core apps; map them to daily tasks.
- Workspace Customization: Build layouts that cluster watchlists, charts, news, and analytics relevant to your universe.
- App Usage: Use specialized apps for price discovery, curve analysis, and relative value.
- Ongoing Learning: Keep up with feature updates and best practices through official training and user communities.
- Daily Reps: Practice under realistic conditions to build speed and reliability.
Consistency breeds fluency. Fluency buys time when markets move.
How to Display Eikon Skills on Your Resume
12. MetaTrader
MetaTrader (MT4/MT5) is a popular platform for retail FX and CFD trading with charting, order management, and programmable automation via Expert Advisors.
Why It's Important
It enables quick execution, flexible analytics, and rule-based automation—useful for rapid testing and deployment of systematic ideas.
How to Improve MetaTrader Skills
Push it beyond the defaults:
Custom Indicators and Scripts: Build or adapt tools in MQL4/MQL5 to match your strategy’s logic.
Expert Advisors: Design robust EAs with clear entry/exit, position sizing, and risk controls.
Backtesting: Use high-quality tick data and walk-forward validation; avoid overfitting at all costs.
Interface Tweaks: Configure layouts, templates, and profiles for fast scanning and execution.
APIs and Connectivity: Integrate with external analytics or data sources where appropriate.
Risk Management: Hard stops, trailing logic, exposure caps. Make them non-negotiable.
VPS Hosting: Run strategies on a reliable VPS to reduce downtime and latency.
Updates: Keep platform and code current to gain stability and security fixes.
Test, log, review. Then test again. Precision wins.
How to Display MetaTrader Skills on Your Resume
