Martin Armstrong Discussion

[darlidada]

Want some free money? Short gold and BTC with a several month timeline.

Am I correct thinking short makes you more profit than buying back if things go well?

Buying back: sell 5 btc at 300, get 1500 usd, buy bac at 100, get 15 btc.
Short: you have 1500 usd on finex, you borrow 5 btc at 300 usd, you sell them on the market, so effectiveley you have now a 3K balance on finex, you buy back 5 btc at 100 for 500usd, you pay back the 5 btc, and you no have a 2500 usd balance on finex, or 25 btc at 100 (minus interests on the 1:1 loan)

Also, what are the risks ? Can you get margin called if price goes too high ? what is the % you should be safe gambling with and how do you calculate it?

@TPTB: are you gonna short it or you have more expected value elsewhere? im thinking about doing it, the trouble is finding the entry point and evaluating the daily interests and the counterparty risk because its gonna be a 3 months short

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[TPTB_need_war]

Want some free money? Short gold and BTC with a several month timeline.

Am I correct thinking short makes you more profit than buying back if things go well?

Buying back: sell 5 btc at 300, get 1500 usd, buy bac at 100, get 15 btc.
Short: you have 1500 usd on finex, you borrow 5 btc at 300 usd, you sell them on the market, so effectiveley you have now a 3K balance on finex, you buy back 5 btc at 100 for 500usd, you pay back the 5 btc, and you no have a 2500 usd balance on finex, or 25 btc at 100 (minus interests on the 1:1 loan)

Also, what are the risks ? Can you get margin called if price goes too high ? what is the % you should be safe gambling with and how do you calculate it?

@TPTB: are you gonna short it or you have more expected value elsewhere? im thinking about doing it, the trouble is finding the entry point and evaluating the daily interests and the counterparty risk because its gonna be a 3 months short

Correct except (your math is slightly wrong and) you need to keep enough BTC margin in your account to guard against a margin call if the price moves up interim. I was originally going to short at $315 with $70 of BTC margin, but then I decided not to do it because:

1. I don't trust that Bitfinex might require KYC and I can not comply easily with that (my name is not on my billing address).

2. I don't 100% trust that Bitfinex's margin calls can move fast enough if the price gaps down instantly, thus causing a default. Don't 100% trust bitfinex won't get hacked. Just a very miniscule doubt that bitfinex isn't shaving coins.

3. I have so much upside on the coin I am developing (10,000+% gains), it is stupid for me to lose time and risk necessarily development capital on shorting.

4. Leave it for those who need it more than I do, so they can invest in my "Bitcoin killer" coin later

5. I sold into $dollars, which is a non-leveraged short position anyhoo.

so effectiveley you have now a 3K balance on finex, you buy back 5 btc at 100 for 500usd, you pay back the 5 btc

Technically your balance is $1500, because you owe 5 BTC @ $300 per BTC.

Also you can hold your margin in BTC on bitfinex, and purportedly then you don't need to submit to KYC requirements even though you sold have also $1500 cash balance. Apparently only if you move fiat in or out of bitfinex from and to a bank then you need to do KYC.

[TPTB_need_war]

We have some news regarding Greece. IMF spokesman declared today that without a haircut, IMF won't be a part of the loan that Greece has asked. Maybe we will have some news until mid August about this matter.

TPTB_need_war: I REALLY am curious if you're correct on your BTC dump prediction (in sync with gold low). For the sake of argument, (and because I like to be the Devil's advocate) I'd say it would be difficult to see a new low for BTC. Here's a thought: I believe what we're now experiencing as 'capitulation' is the effect of this "dump" you're probably expecting. BTC is en route to higher levels.

Let's see who wins.

There is that Hegelian dialectic again (good vs. bad car salesmen trick) that TPTB employ religiously. They are squeezing Greece in between EU/Russia/IMF/China axis powers as you recently incisively (and somewhat quantitatively) demonstrated upthread.

The reason I am (very likely) correct is because speculative capital chases speculative capital, thus fundamentals do not matter.

The speculative capital will shift when it sees the stampede out of the Euro to the dollar and thus the negative for gold and other smaller cap private assets. Shorts chase shorts (just as longs chase longs...greater fool reality), until the smart (early) money starts to cover.

Sorry you will lose this bet. It is part of your learning experience. You are very smart, but I am age 50 and have paid my learning curve dues.

[sidhujag]

We have some news regarding Greece. IMF spokesman declared today that without a haircut, IMF won't be a part of the loan that Greece has asked. Maybe we will have some news until mid August about this matter.

TPTB_need_war: I REALLY am curious if you're correct on your BTC dump prediction (in sync with gold low). For the sake of argument, (and because I like to be the Devil's advocate) I'd say it would be difficult to see a new low for BTC. Here's a thought: I believe what we're now experiencing as 'capitulation' is the effect of this "dump" you're probably expecting. BTC is en route to higher levels.

Let's see who wins.

There is that Hegelian dialectic again (good vs. bad car salesmen trick) that TPTB employ religiously. They are squeezing Greece in between EU/Russia/IMF/China axis powers as you recently incisively (and somewhat quantitatively) demonstrated upthread.

The reason I am (very likely) correct is because speculative capital chases speculative capital, thus fundamentals do not matter.

The speculative capital will shift when it sees the stampede out of the Euro to the dollar and thus the negative for gold and other smaller cap private assets. Shorts chase shorts, until the smart (early) money starts to cover.

Sorry you will lose this bet. It is part of your learning experience. You are very smart, but I am age 50 and have paid my learning curve dues.

The dot com bubble didn't stop the internet from expanding in an exponential pattern.

[TPTB_need_war]

The dot com bubble didn't stop the internet from expanding in an exponential pattern.

Right.

The development of the infrastructure continues. I know I haven't stopped coding   (and others as well of course, I am just a cog in the wheel)

I read the dot.com burst caused many unemployment software engineers to go work on their own startups in their garages. So the infrastructure development accelerated with the burst of the bubble.

Also find that venture capital chart (in my archives) that shows that investment capital in Bitcoin has been rising to offset the falling price.

The extreme short oversold price will be the buying opportunity of a lifetime.

Btw, I was offered $1.2 milion in stock options in year 2000 for my CoolPage.com software business and I would become the CTO or VP. I declined because I predicted the dot.com burst (I saw it coming because of the unprofitable banner ad rates, which I see again now for Google Adsense!) and I took $205,000 in non-exclusive license instead and continued to generate sales from CoolPage for a decade.

[sidhujag]

The dot com bubble didn't stop the internet from expanding in an exponential pattern.

Right.

The development of the infrastructure continues. I know I haven't stopped coding   (and others as well of course, I am just a cog in the wheel)

I read the dot.com burst caused many unemployment software engineers to go work on their own startups in their garages. So the infrastructure development accelerated with the burst of the bubble.

Also find that venture capital chart (in my archives) that shows that investment capital in Bitcoin has been rising to offset the falling price.

The extreme short oversold price will be the buying opportunity of a lifetime.

Btw, I was offered $1.2 milion in stock options in year 2000 for my CoolPage.com software business and I would become the CTO or VP. I declined because I predicted the dot.com burst (I saw it coming because of the unprofitable banner ad rates, which I see again now for Google Adsense!) and I took $205,000 in non-exclusive license instead and continued to generate sales from CoolPage for a decade.

personally i believe this is the extreme oversold price we are at today... and it is a buying period RIGHT now. It hit my target and started to range... now just waiting for LTC to give the clear.. LTC represents ALTs as I believe most good ALTS shoudl rise this time with BTC

[darlidada]

Now, here comes the question: Do you believe ALL the above happened by pure luck or coincidence? What are the odds?

Please email Armstrong. He has coded his model with a myopia that isn't detecting such statistical anomalies. Thus his myopia.

My fuzzy logic engine had worked out probabilities over years of observation, but your example is much more incisive. Kudos.

@TPTB, have you made a post demonstrating through proofs or at least exemples why you think the axis of powers of today are merely smoke and mirrors and they are actually working together? I've read several of your posts when you mention it but never saw deductive demonstration. If I recall correctly, what you said is more of the lines : they are engineering a NWO so if they really want t make it happen, they need to work together and engineer problems to seduce the people into the solutions they wanted.

[TPTB_need_war]

Macgsa provided convincingly probabilistic evidence. I linked to it. You replied to the reply about it. Why can't you read it? The odds of him being wrong are akin to winning the lottery, unless we've missed something in the analysis.

[TPTB_need_war]

personally i believe this is the extreme oversold price we are at today... and it is a buying period RIGHT now. It hit my target and started to range... now just waiting for LTC to give the clear.. LTC represents ALTs as I believe most good ALTS shoudl rise this time with BTC

Oversold relative to what?

Relative to the egregiously overbought $1000 price (where the insiders cashed out with 10,000% gains, leaving the fools holding the bag as usual) when shorting wasn't possible and Bitcoin was plastered on every mass media front page because TPTB want to move us to digital money and eliminate cash.

Oversold can be measured by the despair amongst those who bought Bitcoin in 2013 and later. Once they hate Bitcoin and never want to buy it again, then it will be oversold (so the insiders can reacquire positions for the next greater fool bull run).

Speculative investing is all about CONFIDENCE. Measure everything relative to that.

An expert investor is cold as stone when he speaks. No emotion. No BS. Just the reality of investing.

[darlidada]

Macgsa provided convincingly probabilistic evidence. I linked to it. You replied to the reply about it. Why can't you read it? The odds of him being wrong are akin to winning the lottery, unless we've missed something in the analysis.

I read it. I just wanted your personal demonstration or some exemples you had in mind as I value your insight a lot.

[TPTB_need_war]

Macgsa provided convincingly probabilistic evidence. I linked to it. You replied to the reply about it. Why can't you read it? The odds of him being wrong are akin to winning the lottery, unless we've missed something in the analysis.

I read it. I just wanted your personal demonstration or some exemples you had in mind as I value your insight a lot.

I don't have time. When I do quantitative work, I don't want to look too sloppy. Sorry. I am coding. I think I've said enough. Good luck to all.

Edit: you are asking for investigative journalism. I don't have the resources to go researching that right now. Look what happened to Gary Webb.

Edit#2: if you demand everything in life to proven beyond any doubt and you can't reason with fuzzy logic to clearly see the motives, then you will forever be a slave to TPTB, because they design their methods and protection systems to make sure you can't have the "proof" you want. Remember the Proverbs, "Do not be surety to another", "Do not make promises, for that makes you responsible for the future (do you think you are God?)". Those who want absolute surety here on earth, get absolute slavery.

[darlidada]

Macgsa provided convincingly probabilistic evidence. I linked to it. You replied to the reply about it. Why can't you read it? The odds of him being wrong are akin to winning the lottery, unless we've missed something in the analysis.

I read it. I just wanted your personal demonstration or some exemples you had in mind as I value your insight a lot.

I don't have time. When I do quantitative work, I don't want to look too sloppy. Sorry. I am coding. I think I've said enough. Good luck to all.

Edit: you are asking for investigative journalism. I don't have the resources to go researching that right now. Look what happened to Gary Webb.

Edit#2: if you demand everything in life to proven beyond any doubt and you can't reason with fuzzy logic to clearly see the motives, then you will forever be a slave to TPTB, because they design their methods and protection systems to make sure you can't have the "proof" you want.

True, but the false hegelian dialectic was the ultimate conspiracy theory. Now, thanks to your conceptual framework and Macgsa arguments, I have less trouble accepting its reality. And now, I'm just realizing what you hammered on us : there is no safe haven. We need your coin asap, go to work. Dont bother with me

[sidhujag]

personally i believe this is the extreme oversold price we are at today... and it is a buying period RIGHT now. It hit my target and started to range... now just waiting for LTC to give the clear.. LTC represents ALTs as I believe most good ALTS shoudl rise this time with BTC

Oversold relative to what?

Relative to the egregiously overbought $1000 price (where the insiders cashed out with 10,000% gains, leaving the fools holding the bag as usual) when shorting wasn't possible and Bitcoin was plastered on every mass media front page because TPTB want to move us to digital money and eliminate cash.

Oversold can be measured by the despair amongst those who bought Bitcoin in 2013 and later. Once they hate Bitcoin and never want to buy it again, then it will be oversold (so the insiders can reacquire positions for the next greater fool bull run).

Speculative investing is all about CONFIDENCE. Measure everything relative to that.

An expert investor is cold as stone when he speaks. No emotion. No BS. Just the reality of investing.

Based on the fact that many people gave up on btc.. infact in my office many people who got interested in btc and wanted to buy a few scoffed at it at current prices.. makes me think its ripe to turn around.. my TA pointed to the prices for targets and the HERD mentality once it got there confirmed my call.

[Morecoin Freeman]

I am a sort of prophet.

lol

[tabnloz]

Interesting point Armstrong makes in a recent interview - the debt holders during the great depression were the banks and the wealthy, and many were subsequently wiped out with the sovereign defaults at the time (see US banking holiday and failure of thousands of banks). This time around it's pension funds who hold a large portion of debt, so if there is another round of sovereign debt defaults, people will realise that the 'work all your life to save for your retirement' mantra has been a fraud and their retirement money has evaporated. Then then there will be riots in the streets.

[TPTB_need_war]

But my thinktank group ponders that owning any fixed position asset is going to be an albatross in this coming mad max world. We'd prefer to rent fully developed, unless the purchase price is so low as to be a discardable asset relative to net worth. Might need to discard multiple times in the chaos we are heading into. It is nearly impossible to predict the number of moves a person will need to make to escape various problems coming. We are heading into a Little Ice Age, so all the nordic locations are undesirable.

Real estate is a horrendous diversification because it is not an asset, but rather a liability. Property taxes can rise egregiously, the government can force you to make certain improvements, and even you don't own the land (don't have allodial title) rather it is only a privilege granted by the government which can be rescinded. Many governments have expropriated land within various constructs.

Having an ideological bent against fiat is orthogonal to the timing of when to exit fiat. None of us are going to destroy the fiat system by exiting it early. Investors shouldn't allow their ideology to impact their rationality. A good trader and speculator looks only at the facts. ... I sleep better holding dollars when Bitcoin is poised to drop to 1/3 to 1/10 of its current value and 1/13 to 1/40 of its all time high, especially when all my expenses are in dollars and pesos (pesos depreciating against the dollar).

There is no price manipulation. That is the delusion of the goldbugs. The banksters are creating bubbles which they front run, but they are not manipulating to the downside. Armstrong explained this in great detail numerous times, including his abundance of inside information and the tape recordings he has about their manipulations. He was on the inside of many of the so called manipulations, which were always about creating bubbles to sucker in the greater fools. The market is creating the downside movement which are the exhales from the bubbles and also that we are in a massive deflation.

[TPTB_need_war]

I am reasonably confident all Bitcoin will be expropriated ex post facto (past, present, and future trades all recorded for later analysis by the G20).

Do readers remain in their fantasy world?

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/35308

Well if you ever needed PROOF that gold is not money but rather simply an asset class, all we need do is look at what governments are doing. They are hunting for anything of value. We are likely going to see a migration of assets from Europe to the USA as took place prior and during World War I and World War II. Even Germany is now altering laws under the pretense that they are suddenly concerned about protecting cultural heritage. Under the pretense of updating legislation on the Protection of Cultural Heritage (Cultural Property Protection Act), they are targeting collectors RETROACTIVELY.

Germany’s new proposed legislation is radical and highly destructive. It is going much further than FDR’s confiscation of gold.

...

[TPTB_need_war]

It's not over until the fat lady sings.

Some people here will eat their words as usual.

We may get another bounce up for a double-top at $320 ($315 realizable trade)?

By borrowing BTC and selling on bitfinex. The leverage you can get is dependent on how much % over your selling price you want to hold a reserve to prevent a margin call.

I almost did it, but decided I have better upside in what I am working on. So it wasn't worth the risk to me (not only unexpected volatility to the upside, also bitfinex solvency or the market price moving faster than bitfinex can execute margin calls), but in your case depending how desperate you are, it might be worth the risk if we bounce up again before declining.

I am fairly certain we will decline, but I can't be sure we won't see prices above $320 and below $400 before going down. Above $400, I would declare myself incorrect and eat the losses.

Some people said you can trade on bitfinex and even sell for $usd without doing KYC as long as you don't withdraw fiat. I didn't want to risk that, because it appears it is a discretionary policy.

[macsga]

^^Surely hope you're not targeting me

Capital exodus from China reaches $800bn as crisis deepens
China is reverting to credit stimulus after attempts to engineer a stock market boom failed horribly. The day of reckoning is delayed again

China is engineering yet another mini-boom. Credit is picking up again. The Communist Party has helpfully outlawed falling equity prices.
Economic growth will almost certainly accelerate over the next few months, giving global commodity markets a brief reprieve.
Yet the underlying picture in China is going from bad to worse. Robin Brooks at Goldman Sachs estimates that capital outflows topped $224bn in the second quarter, a level "beyond anything seen historically".

The Chinese central bank (PBOC) is being forced to run down the country's foreign reserves to defend the yuan. This intervention is becoming chronic. The volume is rising. Mr Brooks calculates that the authorities sold $48bn of bonds between March and June.
Charles Dumas at Lombard Street Research says capital outflows - when will we start calling it capital flight? - have reached $800bn over the past year. These are frighteningly large sums of money.

Interesting article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11756858/Capital-exodus-from-China-reaches-800bn-as-crisis-deepens.html

[TPTB_need_war]

[1] the reason I say that is because the Euro is preparing to gap down starting roughly in September or October. Or you short the Euro. I didn't run the numbers on that. I had BTC and needed to make a decision on my BTC. I don't have a brokerage account any more.

Go to stockcharts.com and run a 1 year chart on $EURUSD, then $GOLD, then $BRENT. Then go run a 1 year chart of BTC.

You see all dumped at the same time starting in August 2014.  All these assets are correlated at this time.