Explanation

Reading the question: the prompt doesn't present much argument but the question stem itself contains an opinion. It asks, what gives us grounds to trust technical analysis? There's not much for us to grab onto. The first sentence discusses "past performance of companies in other industries." And the last sentence goes farther somewhat and points out that we lack knowledge of the company's industry. So, technical analysis is good if 1) industry knowledge doesn't matter and 2) performance of companies in other industries is useful. It's kind of an "anti-industry method," to put it crudely; not investing based on industry knowledge. We look for so called "anti-industry" answer choices as our filter.

Applying the filter: (A) and (B) are neutral on the industry question. (C) is pro-industry, so it's the opposite of our filter - it's a weakener - so (C) is out. (D) seems required; how can we use this method without data? But it's industry-neutral, so it doesn't pass the filter. Moreover, a "wealth of data" may not be required, as long as we have sufficient data. Maybe just one good match for a particular stock is all that's needed, or something less than a complete "wealth." Choice (E) is anti-industry, so it passes the filter.

Logical proof: if we negate (E), that means we need industry knowledge and technical analysis will not work. The correct answer is (E).