Fundamental analysis is the study of economic, social and political data that represents and quantifies the economy in question with the goal of determining future movements in a financial market.
Analysts have been grouped into either Technical of Fundamental camps for many years but if truth be told there are very few pure technicians or fundamentalists. Technical analysts cannot really ignore the effect and timing of economic announcements and fundamental analysts cannot really ignore various signals derived from the study of historic prices and volatility.
It is fairly difficult to take into account all the different economic announcements as well as the political and social situations that affect an economy particularly in today's global market, however by understanding the basics and delving deeper into the various fundamentals of the economies one will likely find that his understanding of the financial markets improves dramatically.
There are a myriad of economic announcements and while it may be important to be familiar with schedules and understand the nature and possible impact of the announcements it would be very easy to be too bogged down by the various information until such time as there is too much and one may simply not be able to come up with an effective basis for trading.
Because of the vast number of fundamentals out there, it may be more important to focus on the main price movers as a basis, rather then try to know a little about a lot.