Oh wow you've just got it all figured out man!
Loans = slavery!

Oh wait, except debt forgiveness (bankruptcy) is the whole reason we don't have actual slavery and is one of the most important ingredients of a truly free society. It puts part of the responsibility on the person making the loan by refusing to allow them to enslave another human being just because they're in debt.

I bet you think fractional reserve banking is a scam too  

You can cherry pick a few wackos and make any group look insane and evil, and there's no real difference between what Barbara Spectre says there compared to the average regressive liberal world view. She's just another dumb r-selected woman.

You don't understand how to interpret scripture.

Similar ideas are found in the Bible and other spiritual texts, that those who are closest to god (think of god as the hypothetical ideal man who could act perfectly in every situation because he is all-knowing) will lead the world. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Human evolution is on a path of survival of the most intelligent. As far as all the slavery stuff, it's obvious from those videos that the Jews do not want to literally enslave everyone, they simply believe people will voluntary follow their leadership and serve them. They are a little off, because the reason people would serve them is because they are more intelligent... it has nothing to do with their religion (at least not directly, but of course a lot of their wisdom was passed down through their religion). There are a lot of intelligent people who aren't Jewish as well, so no it won't be just the Jews who will lead the world once people begin to appreciate the more intelligent and see them for heroes they really are.

Now as far as who is closest to god (or rather closest to being a perfectly rational lifeform), that has nothing to do with following a specific religion. If anyone is closest to "god" it's more likely to be libertarians & anarchists, especially those of us who appreciate the mythology & psychology truths found in spiritual texts but reject the religions that surround them.

You are just filled with hatred and you are looking for monsters where there are none, you're just yet another collectivist (cult behaviorism) projecting your own flaws onto the world. You're as irrational as those jews who take everything in their texts literally and actually believe that by praying 3 times a day it somehow makes them a better human being. Being smarter and thinking rationally about the world's problem is what makes us better human beings, so you don't need to be a theist to be closer to "god".

Yeah I think this is a little simplistic, and conveniently (as always) relieves the average citizen from any blame. What we see in the United States is just the natural result of Democracy when people vote for the centralization of power. The reason corporations write the laws are:

A) The people vote for such methods of problem solving (regulations/bureaucracy), rather than solving them through the application of tort law.

B) No one else understands the complexity of the issues in the respective industries other than those who worked in those industries. There's no other way to actually write the laws.

So the problem is in the process we've chosen as a society to deal with the flaws of "capitalism", once again we've chosen central planning, we've chosen the state. It's in the name "state": Frozen in time, inflexible, unable to adapt to changing circumstances, inherently and inevitably prone to becoming totally corrupt.

Not sure if I've shared this here before, but here is the Monthly/Quarterly/Yearly Dollar Forecast Arrays:



2020 is the big year, most likely the peak in the Dollar, but by no means will the climb be a straight shot.

And here was his Portfolio recommendations he gave out at his 2015 WEC conference, as well as his thoughts on how his recommendations might shift going into Jan 2017:




Unfortunately I can't afford to go to his WEC this year, as I have most of my liquid capital tied up in a frivolous legal battle. Long story...

Here's what the monthly array looks like on the S&P 500 (trader preview):


January is an important month...

First of all how is this off-topic when Martin Armstrong is as far as I can tell one of the only people to ever suggest that the Fed is just serving as a patsy for the fiscal crimes of congress, and that both Keynesian AND Austrian economists are delusional and dangerously wrong when it comes to their understanding of fractional reserve banking and the history of money.

Second of all, I did not suggest that. The WHOLE POINT is that banks are not printing money out of thin air, the Fed and the Treasury does that UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF CONGRESS. Even that is still a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money created through congress' debt expenditures (borrowing), of which they (like all governments) have never had any intentions of paying back. But even that money isn't being "created", and certainly not out of thin air! That is REAL DEBT, owed to REAL LENDERS. You don't need central banks with cryptocurrency, but even if you did that wouldn't be a problem in the first place as long as it's privately run and privately funded. Armstrong has explained how the Federal Reserve's ORIGINAL design was intended to be nothing more than just that, a reserve managed and funded by the bankers themselves. He said that was J.P. Morgan's original design, based on the lessons he learned during the panic of 1907. His design only last a year apparently, when the progressives in Washington hijacked it to fund their debts during WWI, after which it was (OF COURSE) never returned to it's original design.

So according to Martin Armstrong, fractional reserve banking & floating paper currencies are not scams as most of the crypto community seems to believe. He's saying the real scam is socialism/marxism/collectivism, the ability for the majority to take out loans under the names of the minority's unborn. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with him. I have a lot of respect for Rothbard, but it seems he was wrong about the nature of money and banking.

What it really comes down to is that Austrians believe FRB (elastic money supply) is responsible for the business cycle, and what Martin is saying is that cycles are inherent to all markets and that an elastic money supply can actually help in this scenario (acting kind of like gyroscopic stabilizer fins on a ship at sea, if you'll excuse such an analogy).

Assuming he's right, then that means the fundamental ideas that all cryptocurrencies are based on are inherently flawed.

So would it not be true that there is a massive opportunity for someone to develop a cryptocurrency based on fractional reserve banking & elastic money supply? Would there be a way to develop an autonomous decentralized fractional reserve system using blockchain technology? Say for example let's say this new alt coin is called "curro", and it's designed so that all the curro in existence can be drawn from by any private company and loaned to any individual, and the interest earned (the profit) is split between the loan provider and every other curro wallet. Meaning every single "curro" wallet is now an interest bearing savings account. You could also design it in a way that allows anyone with a curro wallet to dictate which private loan companies have drawing rights to your wallet, which would allow for a competitive market ensuring that there is no central point of failure (eliminating the possibility of some kind of virtual "bank run"). You could of course also have the option of not letting anyone have drawing rights to your wallet, essentially turning it into a vault which earns no interest but is otherwise completely immune to financial meltdown.

Should see some volatility this week.

FINALLY, Martin actually posted a weekly DOW array. It's been so long since the last one, these days he's too caught up blogging in politics (yawn). Oh well, I'll take what I can get while I wait for Socrates.


I'm long UVXY, I don't think the S&P will go higher than 2150 before a deep retracement down to 2071-2050.

This debate between the naysayers and believers is pointless until the Trader version of Socrates comes out (probably some time after the 2016 conference). These days Martin's updates are too sparse to rely on them for trading IMO, but when I had access to the trader preview for a few months and could see the picture he was looking at in real time it was a different story. Luckily I have other sources of reliable analysis until then.

When it comes to long term forecasts the naysayers will always say he was just stating the obvious

You're so full of shit.

First of all you know damn well Martin's comments about manipulations are derived out of debates about the gold and silver markets. Even then, he didn't say "there are no manipulations", he simply said there are no manipulations that could ever come close to changing the overall trend. When it comes to interest rates he has ALWAYS said the real manipulators are congress and the Fed, but even they can't control the economy over the long term.

Second of all if you actually understood his work you would know that when he talks about interest rates he is referring to rates according to the market not according to what central banks try to manipulate them at. Here is his post about interest rates from January 2013, you'll notice there is a graph of 10 Year Bond Yield rates at the beginning of the post. This is what Armstrong is talking about, interest rates according to the MARKET (AKA according to reality).

"Everything is pointing to a turn in interest rates in 2013."

A TURN in interest rates, not an EXPLOSION. If you look at graphs of 10 year, 5 year, 2 year, 1 year, and 6 months bond yields you will notice that with the exception of the 10 year, they all have failed to exceed the lows they made around 2013. The longer the maturity, the longer it takes for the rates to turn. That doesn't change the fact that the ship began to turn around 2013.

There is labor, and then there is labor leveraged with human intellect, and then there is purely intellectual effort (such as writing the code for a program that makes other people's work much more efficient). Basically, the labor theory of value is pure non-sense. By itself hard work doesn't mean shit when you're a human being, it's smart work that matters. Also most people who get rich are those who learn how to save money, and invest it. This is called leverage, and they don't teach you much about it in the state education system. Socialism or any other kind of redistributive/interventionist centrally planned social schemes will only ever result in the exact thing they were meant to prevent: Chronic poverty and endless monopolies.

Speaking of monopolies, government is the entity which makes all arbitrary monopolies possible in the first place. It is the state who will point to an extremely successful and innovative business, and say look... a natural monopoly! They then punish the "guilty" party while taking their kick-backs in the process. Relevant:

Think of Microsoft supposedly having a "natural monopoly" on internet browsers in the late 1990s, what a joke. The truth is there was nothing truly innovative about other internet browsers at the time, and thus no reason for anyone to use something other than IE. In fact IE 5.0 was arguably superior for it's time. Of course the fact that it was Microsoft's OS did give them an inherent advantage, but it hardly constituted the idea that they had an unbreakable monopoly on internet browsers. People think just because their product is slightly better on a technical level, that means somehow they deserve market share. Using Microsoft's browser on Microsoft's OS had it's own perks, so if competitors really wanted to grab market share they should have focused on making more dramatic & significant innovations rather than being a poor loser and running to daddy government to break up evil Mr. Gate's monopoly.

There are two definitions of monopoly, the economic version (which no one uses), and the political version (which everyone uses, and carries inherently negative implications). The truth is not all monopolies are bad, and in fact a lot of the time the reason one company will have a dominant hold on market share in any particular industry is simply because that is the very reason they are able to offer so much value to their customers in the first place. For example I would argue Intel shoving AMD out of the market is a good thing for consumers in the long run, because at the end of the day there's nothing really dramatically innovative or different about AMDs processors any more. What this really means is that software developers can now focus their efforts on optimizing their code for a single architecture, so at the end of the day the amount of relative computing power consumers will be getting per $ spent will actually be higher.

Ok so looks like were closing for June around 17900 in the DOW, which unfortunately is between Martin's two numbers giving us no real signal.

(Again, written on June 17th, on this private blog @ ask-socrates.com).
1. "...a June closing beneath 17790 will indicate the market is still positioned neutrally."
2. "To imply a breakout requires a June closing above 18137.50..."

According to these two comments, the market is no longer positioned neutrally and yet at the same time it not positioned for a breakout. Either this is simply poor wording on Martin's part, or we should take this to mean we are now in a relatively bullish position but not enough to suggest a likely break out just yet (which may also mean we still a have a little more bearish energy to expect in the immmediate short term). This is why I'm really excited for the trader version of Socrates to come out, as when the trader preview was still being updated I was able to see the reversals and arrays in real time and didn't have to depend on Martin who sometimes make these unfortunate contradictions in his comments.

Further, he made another update on the DOW today, this time on his public blog (Again Martin can't seem to make up his mind, does he want to charge people money for this information or does he want to keep giving it away for free as he's always done?):


I've taken a relatively small short position this afternoon (UVXY @ 9.51), as I expect the market to make a move lower by tomorrow or monday. The weekly bullish reversal is 17915 according to the private post Martin made on June 17th.

Here are the various moves I plan to make, depending on how this plays out:

1. If it looks like we're going to narrowly fail to elect the weekly bullish reversal (17915) at tomorrow's close (within 1%) then I will hold my short position over the weekend and maybe even add to it. For those not familiar, see Martin's video on the 1% rule: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/training-tools/instructional-video-reversals-1-rule/
2. Depending on how low we go tomorrow I may just sell my position for a quick profit, especially if we get near his first technical support number without actually crossing it (17579).
3. If we continue to rally tomorrow I will begin to sell off my position at a loss early in the day, although like I said in my opinion a continued rally is unlikely without first consolidating and then bouncing off of Martin's technical support @ 17579.

Good point, but still a 40% trade is nothing to laugh at, and I prefer to play it relatively safe and watch the monthly reversals.

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this, but this is what he wrote on June 17th in his private blog @ ask-socrates.com:


For me the way I interpreted this was to short the market under the assumption that we would either elect those reversals or come very near to electing them (basically viewing them as a target), and hold over the weekend if it looked like the numbers were going to be elected as Friday came to a close. On late Friday afternoon we were still well below his weekly reversal of 17580, so I held UVXY and sold it today over 16$. That's over a 40% profit.

The reason I sold is because I expect the DOW to rise back up to test his Minor Monthly Bearish reversals @ 17579 by Thursday, and because common sense simply tells me that markets tend to consolidate after big swings like that. Holding over the weekend was somewhat risky (I hate holding over the weekend), but according to his 1% rule (which basically says the narrower you elect the reversal by, the stronger the signal) I was relatively safe to assume there would be a little bit more energy pushing the market slightly lower on Monday's opening.

This worked perfectly for me, so I'm really having trouble understanding all the scepticism here. Martin's reversal system seems to work.

I know what you mean, it's really too bad because I think Evan Duffield is a marketing genius. Marketing is so important because a truly decentralized and private currency will have the full power of the state against it, and only the support of the public at large will be able to fight back against the state monopoly on currency.

Hmm, that makes sense. Do you remember where Armstrong said this? If you can't I can just test it for myself tomorrow just by looking through Socrates and comparing it to the closings over the last few months


Yes that I believe that is correct usage of the composite model, I think most people get confused because whether the bar is the highest or lowest is irrelevant (a high can show up on the lowest bar and a low can show up on the highest bar). The Trading Cycle model is actually the one exception to this rule, as the higher the bar is the more likely a high or low (depending on the color) is made at that time.

The Trading Cycle model is actually quite useful IMO, here is the explanation from Socrates:

Going to try my hand at throwing out a potential swing trade on Crude using Armstrong's arrays & reversals model (I have access to the Socrates trader preview). I'm still figuring out how to properly read his models, so don't bet the farm on this as I wouldn't be surprised if this turns out to be totally wrong.

I have figured out that when it comes to futures markets Armstrong's reversal model switches over to the next month's contracts halfway through each month, so as of Monday his reversals model has been tracking June contracts.

Today (April 20th) Crude futures closed at 44.18 electing 3 Major daily bullish reversals @  42.50 — 42.62 — 44.12, as well as 1 Minor reversal @ 43.40.

Array Analysis:
(still a newbie, can't embed the image sorry)

As you can see the Trading Cycle model on the daily array is showing that today might be a temporary high as we drop down to test the Major weekly bullish reversal @ 42.77 on Friday’s close, which if elected could be followed by a large gap-up over the weekend ending in a major high during intraday trading on Monday (most likely around 46 as that is the next Major weekly bullish reversal).

Just search for "www.themartinarmstrongcase.com" on web.archive.org for his detailed side of the story, and decide for yourself.

Hey first post on this forum,

All I can say is hallelujah, I've been following Armstrong's work for over 10 years now and I've been struggling to find a place where people actually discuss his work. I skimmed through most of this thread and I just love the way some of you guys have found a way to describe the scientific and philosophical intricacies of his work. I also found it pretty funny how many pseudo-skeptics seem to think Armstrong does something so shallow as to make "predictions", and then think they're clever by pointing out where he was "wrong". All I know is I've yet to give Armstrong a dime of my money (although I've been waiting patiently for Socrates), and yet he has single handedly turned me into a very successful trader simply because he always shared the vast vast majority of his knowledge (including arrays & reversal numbers!) for free in his blog and library.

I'm curious, has anyone ever read his 1996 Princeton Economics Tax Reform Proposal? I find it absolutely fascinating, and funny enough it wasn't until I read it that I really began to understand the rest of his work. Why exactly? It's hard to put into words, but I think it's because it helped me TRULY understand exactly how the government actions almost always result in the very opposite of the intentions behind them. For some reason once I had a decent understanding of what was wrong with government, the science behind his models & methodologies started to become more clear.