TA vs. FA

Byrne had a thought provoking post about Technical Analysis. He certainly is pretty open minded about it for a fundamentals guy. I sorta agree and sorta disagree with him though. Money quote: "One of the crucial differences between fundamentals and technicals in this respect is that fundamental analysis is about taking a lot of data and applying a few rules, whereas technical analysis involves a little data (prices and volume) and a lot of rules. "
Certainly, TA only uses price and volume as data--everything else is derived from that. As for a lot of rules, I think that depends on the implementation. Certainly there are a lot of rules out there, but I'm not sure that the successful use of TA depends on using a lot of them--in fact quite the contrary; I think the more successful TA traders use only a few simple rules.
He also said, "However, most of what it (technical analysis) offers is the same thing fundamental analysis offers: Confidence. I'll go out on a limb and hypothesize that whether or not there's any real science behind the discipline of picking stocks, people who are confident that they're right (and can admit it when they're wrong) will do better than the rest." Mostly, I agree with this--especially with the "can admit it when they're wrong" part. I think an essential component of any successful approach is that you pick some criteria by which your thesis will be proven wrong, and set up a contingency plan for what you will do then (i.e., close your position).
In my view what makes TA useful is that to, some degree, EVERYBODY trades on price. The Warren Buffetts of the world say, I'm buying KO below 40 and not a penny more--so the technician says the volume coming in and every dip below 40 get pushed back up to form a nice hammer or whatever you're calling the formation(support). The average Joe trader says I'm underwater on INTC, so everytime it gets back to my entry point at 24, I'm gonna sell and use the money for table dances (note, NOT a work-safe link) and booze. This shows up on the chart as well(resistance.) Oversimplified, but you get the idea.