agree smokey that fundamentals are what will ultimately be...

agree smokey that fundamentals are what will ultimately be responsible for PEK's success (or failure) however there are many that like to trade.
That success rate may still be true (5%) and I did read the same number over 10 years ago when I started trading.
The thing is though being a part time swing trader (ie it is quite acceptable to have a seperate income stream as well means that you can have multiple sources of incomes. I was for years and have only a couple of years ago gone full time trading as my only source of income.
Charting is difficult and all it is meant to do is give the person a better understanding of the crowd behaviour and where and when support and resistance may ocurr in the life cycle of the stock in order to gain a small trading advantage. I have read many books and use TA all the time in my trading however the buy and hold on fundamentals (or at least belief in the fundamentals) have proven enormously better wins for me personally.
There is possiblly a number of factors such as not over trading which is akin to gambling however I feel the biggest contributor and most difficult thing to do is simply do nothing to make money. You buy your stock after your research and you do nothing unless the fundamental reason you purchased changes. Hard to do when you watch the spikes and retraces. I think however I would have held PEK longer than anyone here because of that belief. That belief by the way was in the phosphate at Ngualla and the Imweru gold project. Nothing else. I hadn't even heard of REE's 18 months ago. So sometimes you can be lucky :)

Now as for TA...I think it not only has a place but its place will grow. It is being taught in University now days and all finacial institutions use TA. Currencies are traded almost exclusively on TA which fundamentals only creating the big moves.

Like yourself I choose not to trade using TA or any other method on PEK however everyone else doesn't and it is the 'everyone' else who will dictate the crowd behaviour by their own buying and selling. Traders take profits and move on and also take profits and look to re enter. It is the nature of the market and it is purely that dynamic that allows liquidity. Without liquidity no one would ever buy in because there would be no sellers. So if TA helps liquidity lets be thankful for it.
If traders profit along the way then more power to them I say.
The world and the markets are an interesting place thanks to the diversity within it. Room enough for chartist with their pitchforks without burning them at the stake :)