[mrbaseball]

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these "chartists" as BM calls them, are the but of many jokes he's played on them as they've found support levels, varying degrees of trends (some unbelieveably long), and other TA type factors from charts he generated with his (completely randomly seeded) model.

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Well? There are pyscholgical effects at play. Support and resistance being key. The market is made up of people and these support and resistance areas coupled with volume can tell you what these people are doing and thinking which all shows up on the chart.

There is no Holy Grail in TA. Just a lot of information when understood as a whole can give certain insights into what might be happening. It's a lot of work putting together a reasonable technical picture.

Besides what is the short term player or the market maker to use? The market is currently experiencing some very volatile swings. Are these swings based on fundamentals? Or are they based on human nature, fear and greed? TA is a graphical representation of human nature, fear and greed.