Martin Armstrong Discussion

[s4k4p]

Can someone explain to me the charts Armstrong has shown in the past with buy sell arrows or more specifically long and short signals. I believe this were generated off of reversals?

I think most wanted to follow Socrates as if was to be a thoughtless way to trade...simply follow the reversals and the arrays. Obviously we are all more confused than ever.

Yes it has to do with reversals trades.  On the Pro level commentary they talk about "being currently hypothetically long x number of positions".  I asked about how to follow this and they said that feature is not yet in place.

[1714312724]

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[etoimene]

It's easy to follow. Open (election of reversal) or close and open (reverse) (election of opposite reversal) positions on the market close, based on weather reversals are elected. If no election, no trading.
What is not easy is to trust the system. My backtesting on a daily so far produced very good results.
I wonder what will happen when some choppiness comes. Armstrong wrote that this system is not good for congested market trading.

[s4k4p]

It's easy to follow. Open (election of reversal) or close and open (reverse) (election of opposite reversal) positions on the market close, based on weather reversals are elected. If no election, no trading.
What is not easy is to trust the system. My backtesting on a daily so far produced very good results.
I wonder what will happen when some choppiness comes. Armstrong wrote that this system is not good for congested market trading.

The thing that threw me was the number of hypothetical positions seemed to change at an unusual time (i.e. not at end of fractal period) and they said to use intermediate and major reversals not others - and am unsure which ones are intermediate.

[etoimene]

From what I can see, number of positions is not indicated currently. I assume one position per election day. If multiple reversals are elected, I use only one.
Also, Socrates is still quite buggy, so ....

[rosousa]

We have already shown how turning points are inaccurate

... or how we don't know how to read them ...

We do. Armstrong says that it is based on Composite highs are where highs or lows are formed on intraday or closing highs. So for example, if it shows that October is a turning point on the monthly level, it means that it is supposed to be the the lowest close for the month or the lowest intraday, or highest close or highest intraday. Same can be done on the weekly level. Many have followed Armstrong on here for years including MA and myself and we both have concluded that turning points don't work, and we have shown why that is the case on this thread.

There´s a misconception about the meaning of "turning point" because people confuse it by the english dictionary meaning. But turning point can be a low/high or simple a breakout in the same direction of the trend. How you use that information is the key point as their value is very limited before the fact and you only have enough information, after the fact. After the fact everyone knows what happen in the past, just need to look at a price graphic on the asset :-)

RS
https://twitter.com/ricardosousaIA

[MA_talk]

There´s a misconception about the meaning of "turning point" because people confuse it by the english dictionary meaning. But turning point can be a low/high or simple a breakout in the same direction of the trend. How you use that information is the key point as their value is very limited before the fact and you only have enough information, after the fact. After the fact everyone knows what happen in the past, just need to look at a price graphic on the asset :-)

RS
https://twitter.com/ricardosousaIA

So let me see if I get this correctly about "turning point":

1. If it's a high, it's a correct hit.
2. If it's a low, it's also a correct hit.
3. If it's a breakout in the same direction that is going higher, it's also a correct hit.
4. If it's a breakout in the same direction that is going lower, it's also a correct hit.
5. And if there was a low, and Armstrong's model didn't call it, that doesn't mean that his model is wrong, because he doesn't call out every low.
6. And if there was a high, and Armstrong's model didn't call it, that doesn't mean that his model is wrong, because he doesn't call out every high.
7. And if there was a breakout in the direction that is going higher or lower, and Armstrong's model didn't call it, that doesn't mean that his model is wrong, because he doesn't call out every breakout.
8.  YET, his ECM & Socrates observe GLOBAL capital movement, and nobody questions WHY he is NOT calling every low/high/panic cycle when he "can"?

So do you want to tell me, how it is possible to even disapprove anything said by Armstrong?  And what kind of trading information (or MIS-information) does such "turning point" add?

Isn't that like the global warming crowd, saying that
1. If the weather gets hotter, then it IS global warming.
2. If the weather gets colder, then it is just the weather.
3. If the weather gets dramatically colder, then it IS the global warming again because it brings crazy volatility and crazy weather.

And there is more, you can repeat similar above points from #1 to #7 for Armstrong's "directional change".  His directional change is NOT the English version of directional change either.  Because when you have the directional change indicated from arrays, the direction may not change yet, and the market can change directions SEVERAL time period AFTER that, and obviously he does NOT tell you how many, because it's essentially SO MANY until you forget about it proving him wrong.

The reason that his terms are NOT well-defined is that Armstrong/Socrates cannot give any precise definition, or else he probably will be shown 75% of the time WRONG.

Whenever the traditional meaning of Armstrong's definitions don't work, he will continue to add/elaborate on top of the terms, so that his term can encompass more (of current) scenarios.  But certainly, more explanations will NOT alleviate your trading losses due to Armstrong's bad calls.


So let me try to be Armstrong for once: There is a turning point in July.  It can be a high or low.  But if it's not a high or low, it will likely breakout from the current trend.  If not, within one to three time periods, the counter trend will form, which IS the indication for the turning point.  Otherwise, for the small 25% of the time for turning point, high volatility will rein for the given period, or its low volatility will be followed by high volatility.

Viola, did I cover all possible scenario, and drag out the time frame long enough for you to forget about what happens if I am wrong?

[Warranteum]

it seems like Scotland might break away from UK? They are different than the city folk in London?

[s29]

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/markets-by-sector/interest-rates/when-will-interest-rates-rise/

When Will Interest Rates Rise?
Blog/Interest Rates
Posted Jun 4, 2019 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: In the recent past you have spoken about rising interest rates in the USA being imminent. Just wondering where we stand on that front as rates have been in a downtrend since peaking last fall?

Thanks,

Pete

ANSWER: The rise in interest rates comes with the turn in the ECM in January. However, what you have to understand is there will be a divergence between private and public rates. The central banks really cannot raise rates without creating a budget crisis. The more likely outcome is that governments are losing their ability to borrow in the real market. The public rates are more likely to become simply pegs that render them useless in all practical terms. We have already witnessed this in Europe. The central bank created negative interest rates. All they have done is to kill the viable domestic bond markets.

So Marty finally "admits" that his call on higher interest rates years before the ECM turning point in 2020 was the WRONG call.
And secondly, he "admits" that even if interest rates don't really rise after 2020, that's because the central banks are "manipulating" the interest rates. Let's just cover both sides of the equation.
He just simply double backtracks on a major call he made

[luckyplate]

it seems like Scotland might break away from UK? They are different than the city folk in London?

What does the latest private blog Dow Jones in June says ??

[MA_talk]

Armstrong has been using this construct to "predict" several things now:
From https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/war/cycle-of-war-religion/

It appears we are building toward 2021/2022 when things are going to begin to get heated on a religious basis.

First of all, it "appears".  He is not 100% sure, but it appears.

Then he attempts to give a date, but the date is in YEARS, and for TWO YEARS.

Then he said "going to begin".  But for all these kind of events and trends, nobody can ever precisely define the beginning of such trend.  Did it begin in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025?

1. If a bigger magnitude event happens in 2021/2022, then Armstrong will tell you that he is RIGHT ON.
2. If a bigger magnitude event happens in 2023/2024/2025, then Armstrong will tell you that he is right about that things "begin" in 2021/2022.
3. If nothing significant happens even until 2026/2027, then you can bet that Armstrong will NOT mention a thing about his forecast failure, but instead he will be writing about any current interests at that time.  And you think any of the readers will remember his failed calls at that time?  No, all of them will be focusing on the current events at that time instead.

In essence, Martin Armstrong tries to catch on to any emerging trend here.  He is just a trend observer.

Anything coded in computer algorithm requires capturing the linguistic term in the form of some precise numerical values.  A beginning can be defined as some value exceeding 15% threshold, etc.  Of course, Armstrong is NOT giving you how he defines as "heated" religious issues, nor any threshold values.  Most likely, he is just trying to BS his way to another "excellent call".

That is exactly what he did with "peak of government confidence", and also plague peaking at 2019.  Well, except forecasting the plague from 2014 until now, with nothing much happens (instead of international intensity), he is choosing option#3 above, for the escape.

And the crowd/readers' feedback keeps applauding all of his "success".

[psp777]

So Armstrongs 1% rule worked , but it didn't if you wanted to trade it. Let me explain. Last Friday we elected two weekly bearish reversals on the DOW. The closing price was greater than the 1%. His rule simply states that if the election of the reversal is greater than one percent, prices will snap back to test the reversal. The idea then is to go long or short (depending on the direction of the elected reversal) with a stop on the other side of the reversal. Well, we snapped back to test the two weekly bearish reversals and any one with common sense would have been stopped out of the trade today with the upside move we witnessed.

So interesting the we did snap back, but disappointing that the weekly reversals were not stronger and did not act as resistance.

Side note: I do feel we will see some more weakness in the market and continue to fall completing C of the downward ABC pattern.

[Alex4711]

You may need to look to the next reversal which is valid this week. This gives you an idea of the expected trading range. MA recommends in his video not to start trading with a closing > 1% but looking first what the market is doing.

[etoimene]

Thanks Alex!
Which video exactly?

It is sooo difficult to spot all those details, and each seems important.

EDIT:
This one, I guess.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/training-tools/instructional-video-reversals-1-rule/

EDIT2:
No, not that one.
Can you post a link?

In than one he suggests entering on a retracement to reversal (but typically). You also have to look at timing perspective.

[DanB1]

Regarding reversals and the 1% rule.

Today I asked the helpdesk the following question:
According to the 1% rule, if the closing is >1% than the elected reversal, the reversal will be retested.
Sometimes more than 1 reversal gets elected at a certain time frame, especially at the daily level. If that's the case will all reversals be retested again, or only the last elected one?
So for instance, in a market there are 2 bearish reversals at 101 and 98. The index closes at 95, will both reversals be retested because of the 1% rule or only 98?

Their answer was:
hard to say sometimes in a weak market only the last gets tested in a stronger market the highest. There is no Rule for that just experience

[Alex4711]

EDIT:
This one, I guess.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/training-tools/instructional-video-reversals-1-rule/

Yes, listen at minute 2:20 "wait for the reaction back to the reversal... before taking any type of action".

[nattybear]

Well, this week is turning into a groundhog event.

I've been following MA since November last year after a good friend extolled his accuracy in calling movements in the market. I'm now done with this little experiment of MA and Socrates.

In the last 6mths, we've had TWO significant market run-ups which MA has not only failed to identify but has also been bearish immediately before them.

In Dec (maybe Jan blog - I can't recall) there was a strong "DO NOT ATTEMPT TO GO LONG THIS MARKET" warning... The Dow subsequently put on almost 5,000 pts in a historic upwards movement... To borrow one of MA's catchphrases - that run itself (with some leverage) could be considered a 'trade of a lifetime'. He missed this one big time... Too bad if you were sitting out or even potentially short based on his perspective... Any follow up,  correction, or admission of getting that wrong? Nope...

More recently, across several blogs in May (I limited it to May because April's posts didn't have much info that was tradeable), MA claimed that if the weekly bearish reversals were elected then we should expect to see at least 23,700 (there were several 27K numbers - ~700 was the most common). Even if I'm generous with which day I choose to benchmark this against (i.e. from last Friday's close and not Monday's low) the Dow has run up ~1,200pts since then - or ~800pts from the reversals. So again, if you followed his advice you were either sitting out waiting for a 'restest' of the weekly reversals, OR more likely, short (with a significant run against you) plus the missed trading opportunity.

Rinse and repeat?

Granted - with the weekly reversals he has given two possible dates for a low to form in response to those being elected. In the May blogs, he highlighted either 10th June or weakness into July (you're allowed to pick which one for yourself - 50/50 odds - not bad). With the Trump/Mexico/China drama unfolding it's entirely possible that it falls apart and we see a sharp drop in the market... However, if you follow his approach then you have at a minimum missed a great trading opportunity in this week's quick run up and the subsequent decline, or even worse, nursing a sizable trading loss, praying that Xi publicly gives Trump the middle finger.

This short prediction now gets even more complicated because (as of Friday 2.21pm - trading at 26,023) there are presently 4 bullish daily reversals that could be elected today AND in MA's 6th June blog he screws you over further by stating that a close above 25,725 would signal a further rally...

Now - I'll give credit where it's due. The daily reversal levels have interestingly led to some trading opportunities and proven to be sticking points in price movements, however in my experience, they have not provided much more value than trading Decision Points.

It's been an interesting experiment but after 6mths - I'm done with it.

Note: FFS Marty - get your all knowing AI computer to figure out basic English grammar and use a damn spell checker... There are basic pre-written APIs out there that you can download... OR try out grammarly.com - it's free...

[AnonymousCoder]

Hi,

I have been Socrates subscriber for many years since the service started, including the more recent Pro level. I have also kept record of thousands of Reversals on the Daily, Weekly and Monthly level. I have back tested them all. Even under consideration of the most sophisticated but complicating "Superposition Events" where Reversals are negated by signals that come out of the blue even as acknowledged by his staff, my back tests across all these signals reveal that the accuracy is 50% which is worthless. So they are effectively random signals, although they are based on logic as they are trend following signals that are positioned near support and resistance values. I have also back tested about 100 instances of another daily level signal "False Reaction" that catches a bounce on a daily level that appears to go too far back up from the previous temp high. It failed in roughly 50% of the cases.

When confronted with these issues, Armstrong staff has a simple strategy which is backed up by the overwhelming ambiguity of the system: They basically say that following the reversals is just not enough, one has to consider all the other factors and signals such as timing, energy (which is a mysterious signal). So there is no computerization in spite of Armstrong's AI claims.

So not only as others posted does one need to dig deep into the details to get information - more so the fact is if you do that then you just waste more time to find out the inevitable that such technical systems simply do not work regardless of their complexity. I can say that because I have followed their advice and then the system still fails.

Armstrong claims that he is the inventor of Capital Flow Analysis. For this analysis, the Socrates service has provided from day one a geographic heat map that shows current and projected capital flow daily, weekly and monthly, projected and previous. So one would expect that this prominent feature, which is on the member home page, is at least of some value. But unfortunately, every school kid with some JavaScript knowledge can check out that the logic behind it is bogus (has been for years). If you care, get a trial membership and check out the JavaScript links. The animation effect of changing capital flows between current and projected on the same daily level comes from the error that the script swaps between weekly and daily data where you think it is both on the daily level. It is a fraud, completely bogus. The complicatedness is overwhelming, and the server back-end script that writes these automated reports produces a lot of conflicting garbage.


Martin Armstrong is a charlatan, and he spent 11 years in jail for that reason but he has not changed.

See armstrongecmscam.blogspot.com for a more compact view of major findings posted in this blog.

Every single defrauded person should report their case, see Where and how to complain

[Kiwibird]

Did anyone else see it??!

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/markets-by-sector/interest-rates/trump-v-federal-reserve-why/

He's deleted his final paragraph from this blog post..I definitely read it 12 hrs ago and now I can't find it. 

From memory it said something to the effect that '..I should warn you that the Govt are trying to silence me again, this time once and for all.  They can kill me - it does not matter as it will not affect the outcome...'

I am definitely worried for him.  He should leave the US and move to Asia..!

[Alex4711]

From my side I can only states that the bearish move on Nasdaq was properly predicted by the election of the weekly reversal of Mai 17th, the downturn move stopped at the border of another weekly reversal (June 3rd) which acted well as exit signal (not electing it) and now elected a new bullish weekly reversal that has been elected by more than 1% (risk of counter move is there). I have  now followed the reversals on Nasaq for one year and at least for me worked :-)

It is fair also to say that based on technical analysis alone the bottom of June 3rd would have been expected as it was exactly the minimum of March 8th. So no reversals would have been required to predict a proabability of bouncing.

[nattybear]

Armstrong claims that he is the inventor of Capital Flow Analysis. For this analysis, the Socrates service has provided from day one a geographic heat map that shows current and projected capital flow daily, weekly and monthly, projected and previous. So one would expect that this prominent feature, which is on the member home page, is at least of some value. But unfortunately, every school kid with some JavaScript knowledge can check out that the logic behind it is bogus (has been for years). If you care, get a trial membership and check out the JavaScript links. The animation effect of changing capital flows between current and projected on the same daily level comes from the error that the script swaps between weekly and daily data where you think it is both on the daily level. It is a fraud, completely bogus. The complicatedness is overwhelming, and the server back-end script that writes these automated reports produces a lot of conflicting garbage.

Thanks for the tip. I always discounted any of his Capital Flow Analysis or comments. There are no data points that he can use to track accurately on  a daily basis...

As with many of areas, even if we extend some faith here, his claims that international capital (he seems to like Euros) was flooding into the US and that was propping up the Dow is disconnected from reality and industry. Unless all this capital was parked in Europe and invested in Dow tracking investments there's simply no logical case that all the UHNW investors/institutions would sell off investments in Euros, wear the FX risk, and plough it into the DJIA.