im have a bias towards charting as most of my success today came from recognising resitance levels, breakouts, trends etc. I was a buy and hold investor but that got me nowhere, now ive tripled my starting capital in a few months and from my experience charts definately do have an impact on trading. If you have very strict rules you will do well, problem is most traders break their rules. My logic is that most of our market is dominated by traders and they wont buy and sell until a chart tells them to do so. So if our market is dominated by these traders, naturally trading will be affected by reading charts. I suggest, if you havent already done so, take a look at the daytrading thread and keep an eye on the popular posters there (poly, kevi, ipod) their calls are almost always spot on, their advice has also helped me a great deal.
As a sidenote i beleive our run has almost come to an end and i have sold out completely, holding 100% cash and only trading intraday until we reach previous lows. We may have a couple more good days on the xjo but i think its a matter of time before we get a 300+ down night on the dow.
