Martin Armstrong Discussion

[Kiwibird]

re long term forecasting I found these:

from 2014 on the DOW: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/dow-confusion/
'we still see the two primary targets for highs on this run in the 26000 area followed by 43000 area. The latter would have been a Sling Shot Move now for a high in 2015.75. We are still in a position to see that level but it would appear more-likely-than-not to be the 2017-2018 time period.
This is a question of TIME more so than price. ..The rally will come when the fresh crowd all start to buy once again. That becomes the question as to how high is high. It is starting look like the 43000 number more so than just the 26000 level. We need more price action to confirm that outcome'
- note these forecasts all depend upon the TIME factor i.e. using the Arrays and Reversals together. If they don't hit/come together then you wait for the next cycle/Time and Price to come together for the forecast to become fact.

from Jan 2015 re Bonds: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/the-bond-bubble-confirmed/
'This 2015.75 turn should be the start of BIG BANG and this should be a market with the low in interest rates that ferments the peak in the bond bubble'
- note he doesn't say in January that there will be a crash 8 months later on that exact date 2015.75..he says it's the start that 'ferments' the peak in bonds - that fermented (think bubbly) peak came to fruition nearly a year later in July 2016 and has been heading on a southwards trend ever since.

A bit more on Time and Price coming together in relation to Gold from 2013 - he forecast the low should be 2015 if Time and Price come together:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/time-price/
'as far as the low is concerned, the price can be between 1050 and 850. It is more WHEN the price is reached rather than the express actual number. BOTH have to be achieved. If we saw $950 tomorrow, sorry, that would not be the low because the time is not right.'

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[trc4949]

The thing is today's drop was the biggest single drop of the entire year second only to February of this year.

HUGE Potential profits to be made on today's drop.  And yet I did not hear any confident aggressive call that this drop was coming today.  Only that we are in 'consolidation'.

Simple technical analysis forewarned that this drop and of this size was coming.

I get his blog updates and there was zero warning about today.

[MA_talk]

Here are the typos.  It has been a long time, and I recalled incorrectly.  It wasn't fire/hire.

It was hire/higher, but this is not from his reader.  Only showed it as an example of his typo ability.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/greenspan-sees-inflation-or-stagflation-there-is-a-difference/
a shortage in supply will result in hire prices

This is the typo that I intended to comment, a typo from his reader:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170725212844/https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/qa/what-books-are-there-for-monetary-history/

Keep up the hood work and see you in November.


Here is another example of very suspicious reader's comment:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180703163201/http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/basic-concepts/the-path-of-order-rather-than-chaos-lead-to-understanding/
why the Sovereign Debt Crisis will bring Gov. Debt to 0

There was a typo of t missing in boldface that I added.  And I don't know ANYONE else (besides Armstrong) who can blah/blah/blah through all those magic numbers fluently, just like this reader.  Honestly, I cannot make anything out of this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180703163201/http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/basic-concepts/the-path-of-order-rather-than-chaos-lead-to-understanding/

noting the ratios of events in time 8.6(9) year frequency with the 1.075(1.3) year short leg and the 2.15(2.6) (1.3 +2.6=3.9) year Long leg to volatility wave/ change in trend PI 3.1415(3.2)


So what's the chance of another person/reader who writes in this?  When was the last time that you see someone typing hood work instead of good work without realizing the typo in front of you.


As I said that Armstrong is probably an above-average trader.  So he probably could get things more correct than often, but it's not as he has claimed, "AI computer" that is not biased.  You need to collect Armstrong's specific forecasts to get the actual value from his stuffs.  The problem of being ambiguous is this.  Let's say I open a stock market newsletter.  If I keep the wording ambiguous, and let's say 45% of people traded wrong and 55% of the people traded correctly, due to a combination of my forecast wording and people's innate trading intuition, there will ALWAYS be some percentage of profitable trades from whatever I say.  As long as I can keep the 45% of the losing subscribers to hang on longer, and the drop off rates is less than the incoming rate, then my newsletter business will keep booming.  And since every time the people who lose in trades may not be the same people, it's not really a big problem for the constantly changing 45% of people to hang on.  The only person among all who can always win is the person who is publishing the newsletter.

The honest newsletter writers will post ACTUAL trades and keep a record, because they are actually good, and they have a real winning record to post for everyone to see.  Armstrong has none, and he doesn't keep track.  Again, all he needs to dispel this is to post a trade record in real-time, and shows a good trading profits from it consistently, beating index funds.  As long as it's a winning record, it's good.


Instead, he boasted that he created AI, speech recognition, natural language processing way before year 2000, and one time, he posted that his AI computer is "self-conscious", etc, while at the same time, he cannot stick to a single cycle length number for his ECM.  8.6153846615 was in the headline section, but it won't give you Sep 30/Oct 1st, 2015 date, which is supposedly accurate "down to the day".
http://web.archive.org/web/20141015175106/http:/armstrongeconomics.com/

Save the number/picture before Armstrong files a copyright infringement against web archive.org.

I don't think there is any real value in his ECM.  It's just a tool for him to magically play with numbers.

[MA_talk]

This is the real reason that he went to jail, I think, and I posted it before.  Boldfaces are mine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180221203803/https://www.hedgeweek.com/2009/08/25/martin-armstrong-and-two-firms-pay-usd27m-anti-fraud-action
------- start -----
The consent orders arise from a CFTC complaint filed on 13 September 1999, against Armstrong and PGM and PEI, the corporations he directed as chairman. The complaint alleged that from approximately November 1997 to September 1999 Armstrong, PEI and PGM defrauded customers by operating and managing a commodity pool that concealed substantial trading losses incurred as the result of commodity futures trading. The complaint further charged Armstrong, PEI and PGM with issuing reports to customers that fraudulently represented the net asset value of their interests in the commodity pool. A related civil action was filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In July 2004 the CFTC entered an order against Harold Ludwig, former co-director, with Martin Armstrong, of PGM, which required Ludwig to pay USD4.9m in restitution and a USD2m civil monetary penalty for his role in fraudulently allocating profitable trades to benefit himself rather than the Princeton customers. Also in July 2004, the CFTC entered an order against William Rogers and Maria Toczylowski, the former president and vice president, respectively, of the commodity futures division of Republic New York Securities. The order required them to pay USD6m and USD400,000 in restitution and USD2m and USD240,000 in civil monetary penalties, respectively, for their roles in executing net asset value letters that intentionally misrepresented the true values of the Princeton accounts and for assisting in fraudulently allocating trades to the detriment of Princeton customers.
---- end of partial text ----

PEI and PGM are Armstrong's companies.  How in the world can he NOT know about the fraudulent allocations of the trades, for such a smart person like he is??  And if his firm was generating such substantial trading losses overall, how well can he actually trade?  Didn't he has the AI computer to help him?

[trc4949]

The thing is basic tape reading skills will help one find reversals in the market or tops.  Divergences etc etc.

I like Marty's broad economic discussion macro discussion of bigger trends in markets which he seems to be correct on generally.

But what I don't care for is his constant bashing of other market timers, and his seeming reluctance to ever admit he is wrong on anything.

Generally speaking it sort of brings up this philosophical question when any person has character flaws (lies, fraudulent etc)  do we still follow them as a friend, advisor, or continue to trust their work for our own benefit ?

There is no perfect person in this world, everyone has some good and some bad.  So when someone is 70% bad and only 30% good do you still invite them to dinner at your house ?

Another example is this guy Mike Murdock.  A pastor who preaches a lot about wisdom and self help and how to become wealthy through wisdom and good principles of life.... but then he spends the other half the time basically begging for money and promising people they will get rich if they donate money to him.

Really odd, I mean I love his advice and principles but then it is mixed with this odd seeming character flaw that he seems to pray on vulnerable people.

[MA_talk]

So I'd like to ask, after reading his private blog (daily), do you buy or sell, and how much percentage?  And when do you close the trade?

If you are the 55%(?) of the people consistently that does the correct trades by reading his blog, then that's really totally fine.  You should continue the subscription.  But most people probably aren't.

The problem is that his advice MUST be clear to take out the subscribers' different nature and different emotional reactions in order to let them be consistently profitable.

Is Armstrong doing that?  Or is he trying to give you if-then-else, then-do-this-do-that, essentially tracking the market curves up and down, and that he will never be wrong, since he continuously tracks and describes the market?

He can always point to somebody who subscribes to him, and had a winning trade, no doubt about it.  But how many others that are not posting here or elsewhere are losing?

Therefore, I kept proposing to simply measure something measurable from his writings consistently and that will shine light on his accuracy of forecast.  And if that accuracy is 70% accurate, or 60% accurate, that's fine.  At least that's something that you know that you could use.  But we all know that it's just not even close to 100%.  And that's what I said about bar height/price levels, which is something really simple to do and measure.

And I don't care about whether he was a fraud or not, as long as his forecast is reasonably accurate.  However, being a past fraud if he really is based on that SEC/CFTC judgment and my posted link, then obviously, MORE attentions must be paid due to his past fraudulent actions.

What I've found most often is that his (post-event) writing is obviously accurate because it's post-event, and that gives you an impression that he is accurate.  Plus the fact that he always gives you if-then-else, etc. that essentially tracks the market behavior without telling you to buy or sell, he is "uselessly accurate" again, almost like any other technical analysis methods that relies on the closing price to plot the next point.

At the end of the days, everyone is stuck with his own profit/loss.  As long as reading such "market tracking" blog works for you consistently, that is indeed great.

I'm guessing that Armstrong can maybe trade profitably consistently.  But if people see that he can just beat the market index by 1% with for example only 60% correct trades and 40% incorrect trades, probably no one would be fascinated by him at all.  But if people buy into his magic ECM and AI computer, a lot more people will be impressed.

[Kiwibird]

When his movie comes out it'll tell the story.. that is if it's not banned in your location.

The movie will be FACTUAL because :
'First, you have to understand for them to do such a movie, they have to get insurance to cover any lawsuit claims. Everything in that movie had to be presented to Lyods of London to prove that all statements could be proven in a court in order to even get such insurance. They had to investigate the claims in detail on both sides or such a film would never be made. It was funded by the German TV station.'

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrong-in-the-media/the-forecaster/gag-orders-cover-ups/

'When it became clear that the receiver was trying to paint me as a rogue trader who conspired with the bank’s own people against my own clients, that would have allowed the bank to keep all the money. So I did an interview with the Japanese press and told all my clients to come to New York and file suits against the bank. They did. I met with their lead lawyer and I agreed to help them and testify against the bank. The bankers ran to the government and they escorted them into my case and placed a lifetime gag order on me to prevent me from helping my clients against the bankers. No lawyer I know of has EVER heard of such a gag order. This single action demonstrates that there is no rule of law in New York and you will NEVER win a lawsuit against a New York bank – PERIOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Republic/HSBC pleaded guilty and had to pay $640 million because they simply took the money.
As for my plea, they would not drop the charges and Richard Owens said to my face he knew I did not take any money. Obvious! You either write a check or you wire it out. You cannot yet beam it out like Star Trek.'

[MA_talk]

Kiwibird,

  I'm not defending the bank nor USA legal system, etc.  I kept saying that probably over 95% of info on his blog is completely true.  But how are you going to tell when Armstrong slips in 5% untruth (if he did)?  And for every untruth, you need to ask yourself WHY he is saying/doing that.

  And you just need to LOOK at the facts.  FACT: His co-director was found guilty fraudulently allocating profitable trades.  CONJECTURE: Armstrong is a smart guy, and he should be aware of that.

  FACT: In 1987, fastest CPU on computer CPU was running at some 33MHz, but at year 2000, CPU was running at 3.3GHz.  In just 13 years, technology advanced by a factor of 100.  It has basically been exponential, which you can roll back further the speed to earlier than 1987 via exponential curve fitting.  Yet, Armstrong claimed that he did better than the speech recognition from Dragon dictation system before that time.  In 1987, the hard drive size was about 2MB.  Now 3TB is super-cheap.  That's a factor of 1.5 Million advancement (not to mention the cost that went down probably another 20X).
  He did show a picture with his PC, which was very similar to the one that I had.  HOW ON EARTH can he get access to such large storage that may be required and huge processing CPU power in 1970/80s, when even today, your speech is sent over via internet to Google/Apple to be processed by their cloud of servers for speech recognition, because your local CPU doesn't even have enough processing power?

  WHY did he make such claim?


  I can go on & on.  Yes, maybe he was over-punished in jail.  Yes, maybe he was mis-treated by legal systems.  But how do you explain that his co-director fraudulently allocating profitable trades?  BOTH can be true at the same time.

  Again, I'm just trying to judge his trading forecast for its own merit, and not him as a person.  Don't twist his words.  Don't twist your thinking.  Just stick to the same measuring method on his forecast array, and you can scientifically determine whether his forecast array has any (tradable) values or not.

  If I have an AI computer like his, I would just show the AI trading record on every financial market to show how successful it can be, and for trading in my personal account too.  No if-then-else.  It's either you can make money, or you don't.  But such black-and-white record if it's not successful will expose the "AI computer".

[Kiwibird]

I wish he had someone who could explain things to the layman, because it would be much easier. His if-then short term calls do well- often the kind where 'if the market closes above/below X by Y time then we will do this". They don't come too often though.
[/quote]

Did you watch the WEC 2016 Arrays & Reversals workshop (@ 2 hours) https://vimeo.com/198896912? 
You may find it helpful, although I feel you have a pretty good grasp already.

Is this finally the Slingshot move?!

[Kiwibird]

Kiwibird,

  I'm not defending the bank nor USA legal system, etc.  I kept saying that probably over 95% of info on his blog is completely true.  But how are you going to tell when Armstrong slips in 5% untruth (if he did)?  And for every untruth, you need to ask yourself WHY he is saying/doing that.

  And you just need to LOOK at the facts.  FACT: His co-director was found guilty fraudulently allocating profitable trades.  CONJECTURE: Armstrong is a smart guy, and he should be aware of that.

  FACT: In 1987, fastest CPU on computer CPU was running at some 33MHz, but at year 2000, CPU was running at 3.3GHz.  In just 13 years, technology advanced by a factor of 100.  It has basically been exponential, which you can roll back further the speed to earlier than 1987 via exponential curve fitting.  Yet, Armstrong claimed that he did better than the speech recognition from Dragon dictation system before that time.  In 1987, the hard drive size was about 2MB.  Now 3TB is super-cheap.  That's a factor of 1.5 Million advancement (not to mention the cost that went down probably another 20X).
  He did show a picture with his PC, which was very similar to the one that I had.  HOW ON EARTH can he get access to such large storage that may be required and huge processing CPU power in 1970/80s, when even today, your speech is sent over via internet to Google/Apple to be processed by their cloud of servers for speech recognition, because your local CPU doesn't even have enough processing power?

  WHY did he make such claim?


  I can go on & on.  Yes, maybe he was over-punished in jail.  Yes, maybe he was mis-treated by legal systems.  But how do you explain that his co-director fraudulently allocating profitable trades?  BOTH can be true at the same time.

  Again, I'm just trying to judge his trading forecast for its own merit, and not him as a person.  Don't twist his words.  Don't twist your thinking.  Just stick to the same measuring method on his forecast array, and you can scientifically determine whether his forecast array has any (tradable) values or not.

  If I have an AI computer like his, I would just show the AI trading record on every financial market to show how successful it can be, and for trading in my personal account too.  No if-then-else.  It's either you can make money, or you don't.  But such black-and-white record if it's not successful will expose the "AI computer".

If Armstrong's charges were bogus then why not the other charges too as they all happened around the same time - connected?  Anything to discredit PEI and Armstrong.

re speech recognition I have no idea, I'm not a techie.  why don't you email to ask him?  He's replied online to my queries (related to Socrates) when I joined the membership - both he and Erwin

[THX 1138]

Here are the typos.  It has been a long time, and I recalled incorrectly.  It wasn't fire/hire.

It was hire/higher, but this is not from his reader.  Only showed it as an example of his typo ability...

.......Here is another example of very suspicious reader's comment:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180703163201/http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/basic-concepts/the-path-of-order-rather-than-chaos-lead-to-understanding/
why the Sovereign Debt Crisis will bring Gov. Debt to 0.....

The latter serves as a good example of what I remarked upon previously about there often being a familiar syntax and style within the text of some of his "commenters" - and creepily self-congratulatory in its reply too!

.....Save the number/picture before Armstrong files a copyright infringement against web archive.org.

Looks like we need a decentralised web archive;-)

I don't think there is any real value in his ECM.  It's just a tool for him to magically play with numbers.

Astrology for traders? Perhaps a touch of the fantasist in him. I wonder how seriously we can take his "behind the curtain" remarks too. A shame, as he was one of my group of "influencers". Some re-calibrating to be done.

Generally speaking it sort of brings up this philosophical question when any person has character flaws (lies, fraudulent etc)  do we still follow them as a friend, advisor, or continue to trust their work for our own benefit ?

There is no perfect person in this world, everyone has some good and some bad.  So when someone is 70% bad and only 30% good do you still invite them to dinner at your house ?

......Really odd, I mean I love his advice and principles but then it is mixed with this odd seeming character flaw....

Yes, I agree. A tricky one. Ultimately, I guess we need to develop our individual senses when analysing the output of anyone we follow; to sort the wheat from the chaff, and use each of them in an attempt to construct some sort of robust and effective tool that is constantly being refined; hopefuly etaining the quality of being more than the sum of its varied parts.

[Kiwibird]

I got answers about his arrays before.  The bars ACTUALLY do mean the price levels, as he emailed me.  And I forgot where he said this, but he said that the price levels are relative only in THAT timeframe that is being plotted.  So you cannot compare the price levels between two different array plots.

See at 2hrs 23mins - https://vimeo.com/198896912  which confirms what you have written above:

"the bars relate to price levels..the array has to match price level activity.."

The highest bars reflect the most amount of cycles hitting at that moment in time.
It's not just the top composite bar that highlights price activity by the highest bars, it's also high bars shown the other levels such as Empirical etc..

[MA_talk]

Kiwibird, do you agree that ECM is the CORE of Armstrong modeling?

If you agree with that, do you agree that 8.6 is not equal to 8.61513, and do you agree that Oct 7th, 2015, is not the same date as Oct 1st, 2015?   However, both sets of dates & numbers are DIRECTLY from Armstrong, when he keeps claiming the accuracy down to the day.

Wouldn't you think that there is something wrong, when the fundamental core of his modelling is just NOT right, and he needs to make it correct, by playing with the numbers?

I cannot debate anything with you on his jail term, when you simply just want to believe 100% in Armstrong.

To believe in anything or any people, you cannot assume anything that is true (against or for).  You collect your evidences as they come along.  If a guy tells any lie, then that is a red flag.  If a guy tell two lies, then that is a bigger red flag.  If a guy shows a pattern of telling lies constantly, then this guy is a fraud.

Whatever his forecasts and however he (or the reader) wants to twist it and understand it, it's fine.  But math never lies.  8.6 is not the same as 8.615, because if I assume that they are close enough, then I subtract 8.6 on both sides, and I will get 0 = 0.015.  And then I multiply both side by 1/0.015, and then I get 0 = 1, and then I add 1 to both sides, and I can get 1 = 2, and then all the numbers in the universe can be made equal (and likewise all the dates can be fit somehow into his 8.6/PI number).  A 1% error in his math or number of 8.6 after thousands of years will produce very big differences later.  But he doesn't seem to realize that.

Armstrong knows nothing about uncertainty and errors of such, nor does he calibrate anything.  His AI computer is perfectly and accurate down to the day as always.

Before year 2009 or so, his ECM cycle plot NEVER had the PI date on it.  Now, he adds that PI date too within his ECM plots of 8.6 years.  The more I think about why that is, I could only come to one conclusion.  It's just great for number playing.

[MA_talk]

It looks like the Dow should close above 25044. Therefore, according to the forecast, Monday should be an up day.

Monday today was not an up day.

Armstrong obviously did not make an aggressive call on the recent market drop, according to another subscriber who said he wasn't warned.

[MA_talk]

Also, because he said bounce for 2 days, this means rally into Wednesday-Thursday. Thursday is a Panic Cycle and Friday is a turning point. Friday also shows a high amount of volatility. So unless Armstrong posts more updates, the plan is to go long until Thursday. That is when it would be time to go short again.

Bounce for 2 days?  You (Armstrong) mean this Wed & Thursday.  My problem is that he is never clear.  And so he can be always "right".

Turning Point (TP) supposedly by the English definition is that it is a local maximum or local minimum point.  Somehow, that's just not always the case for Armstrong.

And then he sort of explained that it's only when you get to Direction Change (DC) that you see bigger trend change.  But I don't think that works that well all the time either.

With both DC and TP plotted everywhere, and also Armstrong's liberal explanation, AND worst of all, not even indicating whether it's a peak or a bottom, now it becomes extremely hard to use that to trade.  Plus you can get cycle inversion, which means the original forecasted max becomes min, or vice versa.  WTF!  You cannot even rely on counting successive TP/DC to determine the max or min points on the curve due to cycle inversion.

My whole point about ECM is that Armstrong is NOT consistent in using the value of 8.6.  The fact that he is NOT consistent, indicates that he very likely tries to cheat his way out by playing with numbers.  The possibilities of other lies in other stuffs that he said increases dramatically, especially given the fact that he puts SO MUCH emphasis about ECM, that he was willing to put that 8-digit 8.6 number in the HEADLINE section of his blog.  Obviously, he must think it is important and integral to all of what he is doing, or else why would he put that 8-digit 8.6 number there.

[DigiLab]

According to Armstrong, DOW should go down into the week, and on Friday?? Also Gold should go up into November, and if it breaks Monthly Bullish Reversal 1362 then continue going up into January. If not, then down into January. That's how I'm reading his arrays.

[DigiLab]

I'm not Armstrong savvy, yet. I noticed that monthly array on Gold, is scary accurate so far. Let's see will it play out all the way.
Just the reversals can be a powerful tool, and coupled with the arrays (time), even more. Would love to figure out how reversals are generated. Appears to be Fibonacci style (horizontal, don't depend on trend lines), but as I did check not always match Fibonacci. I know they are to be elected on closing level, but are the reversals calculated on the closing, or intraday levels, hmmm?

[DigiLab]

Thank you. Fibos are very powerful tool. It has happened more often than not, to match Armstrong Reversals. Will play little more to see will some connection emerge between Fibos and Armstrong's Reversals.

[Gumbi]

We exceeded Friday's high on this Monday turning point. Therefore, I am thinking we go red tomorrow.

Come on Bikefront please at least do your homework before posting such nonsense. Armstrong clearly said for the close of Friday the 12th that a closing above 25044(which was a minor weekly bullish reversal) today should imply a bounce into Monday for 2 days and then back down.

[Gumbi]

We exceeded Friday's high on this Monday turning point. Therefore, I am thinking we go red tomorrow.

Come on Bikefront please at least do your homework before posting such nonsense. Armstrong clearly said for the close of Friday the 12th that a closing above 25044(which was a minor weekly bullish reversal) today should imply a bounce into Monday for 2 days and then back down.

Yes I know but then he also said that Monday is a turning point. It didn't make a low. He also said "It we bounce and just exceed Friday's high, then the risk will be of a decline into the end of the week." Honestly, it would have been better if he had not even mentioned that part because it added ambiguity to the original forecast. I thought he might have been referring to declining for the rest of the week. Anyway, I think Wednesday is supposed to be the high for the week, because the Nasdaq and S and P 500 has them as turning points.

Words can be tricky sometimes, I unfortunately thought the same thing. But I think in hindsight that new blog posts do not necessarily nullify old ones. I think for the Dow the resistance for Wednesday could be the the weekly bearish reversal we previously elected at 25754