Martin Armstrong Discussion

[s29]

Yes, I saw that post as well.

"We are already experiencing rising interest rates in the peripheral governments where their central banks do not engage in QE — namely emerging markets."

This morning I checked yields across the curve of many countries. The only country where I can see the yields really increasing is Pakistan. Does anyone disagree?

But I do believe he has a point in the thesis that money will move from public to private. As soon as 1 country (Turkey for instance) gets in trouble, it will all happen very fast.
Although I think money will not flow directly from public to private. Most of it will move in to German, Dutch, Swiss, US bonds probably.

Oh I agree with that, why would private investors be excited about investing in AAA-bonds, if they yield nothing? Then equities with dividends and more potential upside are way more attractive (longer term). Although you don't have to be a rock scientist to see that, I do agree with Armstrong on that. I think 36-40.000 on the Dow is doable in several years.

But if he called many times year after year for higher interest rates (specifically also on US and German bonds) then Armstrong was just simply wrong, especially since he likes to brag about how many central banks he advised. He should have known that. A lot of people and institutions probably followed his advice in the last years "to get out of bonds", while turns out now, nobody should have been in a hurry to exactly do that.

I don't follow the EM bond market; but a lot of these countries always get into trouble sooner or later. Not really a rocket scientist prediction.

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[MA_talk]

I hate to say this but there is flaw in judging the system by going through the blog. MA does of course know the weakness of the system. Before he posts a message on the blog, he will make a definite statement only in case where he has cherry-picked a case that he is most confident about. And still he fails. But we don't have this luxury. Those trades are so rare that it meets the criteria that rosousa has explained in detail with his risk / reward calculation in an earlier post that is worth reading. In simple terms, the system does not let you cherry-pick like that because there is no cherry-picker in it. And if you could in fact cherry-pick somehow, then you would only get three trades in a year.

I fell for this as well. Years ago, I bought the gold reports and recorded the statistics of the reversals in the gold reports. It was amazing. Why did it work so well then? Because it was a year's worth of steady declines. Then the market turned and MA missed the bounce, still writing bearish messages. For me, this was devastating. After the fact, months later he bragged about the system being right again because it had sent a long term quarterly bullish reversal superimposed with a shorter time quarterly bearish reversal. This is a real model case.
....
I never heard about that 993 bullish at the time when it was needed. Note that this is a bullish reversal that is generated well below market price. The number 993 is likely just made up. It is NOT a reversal in a sense that is generated prior for you to examine. And I bought the report which comes in installments with videos and so on, covering a year (not ending at end of year but going well into that period where we should have received that signal) and it was not available. So what are these superposition events then? They come after the fact! They are fraudulent. The system discovers that it is wrong and voila, it has an automatic excuse. Months later? Give me a break! Like the weekly superposition events. They come out on Monday when the system discovers that the price has crossed the threshold that marks the failure of the elected reversal. They should be called REVISION signals because superposition is something else. Superposition is when a resulting signal is composed of multiple signal components at the same time, simultaneously, to form a more complex signal. Not a corrective signal is added at a later time. So it is all misleading left, right and center and incompetence is everywhere.

Yes, I remember that very clearly.  And I found that when he is wrong, he just stops temporarily blogging about it.  And then much later, he will do exactly as what you have described, claiming success when you canNOT verify that he actually did.  And then he will pick up where he left off, and continues as everything went swell (even through the gap).

And then you will be like, WTF, did I just miss anything that he said???

Well, the thing was just that Armstrong/Socrates FAILED, and then Armstrong has a problem of recognizing and admitting his own failures.

But for his followers, the result is always horrendous.  Because the market turned already, and your trades are in disaster mode.

So when the market is trending, it's fine.  But it IS when the market TURNS, that traders make a killing of their money, but you will NOT get the correct timing from Armstrong/Socrates.

Notice that he is not talking about his year-end bearish close on bitcoin.  Only when post-event, when he is sure that he is right, he will pick up the thread again.


I didn't know that was how Armstrong made up 993 reversal, as I wasn't watching that closely as you did.

[AnonymousCoder]

....
So when the market is trending, it's fine. But it IS when the market TURNS, that traders make a killing of their money, but you will NOT get the correct timing from Armstrong/Socrates.
....

That sums it up nicely. So what is the reason for this technically?

1) The timing signals, provided by the forecast arrays are simply rubbish. They are a terrible patch work using a dubious ensemble method. The result is subject to human interpretation, and there is not much to say about this - they just don't work.

2) Imagine the reversals are generated by slicing the time going backwards from the generating extreme to the previous opposite extreme into time slots. There might be some kind of projection involved which is needed for reversal values that the market has not yet visited, but nothing fancy.The reversal values are somewhere near where the price line crosses the four vertical boundary lines of these time slots. In some cases, depending on the shape of the price curve going backwards to the previous extreme, there are multiple reversals with same or near same values, which are then the double, triple reversals. The reversals are near previous / projected resistance and support values naturally because that is where the price movement is flatter, and where the vertical time lines cross the price line more easily / more often. These reversals work, if the trend is clear price wise going back into the direction of the previous extreme or some kind of projection. They are elected one after the other, just like following your nose. If however, the market does NOT move in this simple fashion, such as now, in some kind of consolidation period, then the reversals are elected in a chaotic fashion. You buy the high and sell the low. That is because the reversals are near resistance and support, and you are getting whip-lashed in the trend channel between them. It is this situation where we need the ambiguous human interpretation of the forecast arrays to provide excuses for the failures. Here, recently MA produces user feedback about them trading AGAINST the failing reversals, praising them for doing so in his public blog. See Trading Against the Reversals. Also, in such movements, failing weekly reversals are effectively degraded to daily reversals or any time period by providing another excuse as described here: Reversals & Timing. This really destroys any confidence in the reversals because it is a complete mess, just for the purpose of perfect deniability.

3) The Socrates system does not have any means to detect whether the market is in a mode where the reversal system works or not (trending or turning as you say). Therefore, over time, using this system, a trading account will be depleted, basically because markets are moving sideways longer than they are declining / rising as nicely as the reversal system wants them to. Or, when the market is turning and there are no signals indicating the turn.

I didn't know that was how Armstrong made up 993 reversal, as I wasn't watching that closely as you did.

When I say it was made up, I mean to say that the computer makes it up. These immediate revision reversals, for the purpose of publishing only, need to have a number that is far enough away from the close to be guaranteed to be elected. The number is therefore meaningless. That is why I am saying they are made up, because once the system decides one is needed to correct the failure, then there should not be an option that it is NOT elected, so its price is always far enough away from the close, but it does not have any physical meaning. In this case, there was nothing at 993 that could be interpreted price wise. At the time, I really scratched my head about this number, believe me. The reason why I am criticizing these reversals is because in MA's own scheme, they are something else not reversals. They are effectively borrowed from the future, created in hindsight. If they were reversals like the other regular ones, then they would be available simultaneously with the opposite reversals that failed earlier.

The reason I go into such detail is because knowledge is asymmetric and unfair, and MA has a clear advantage by completely controlling the information on his public and private blogs where no user feedback is allowed except what is censored / manufactured by MA. The user on the other side, simply does not usually have the resources that I have applied to this mess. So I am sharing my knowledge here as others do as well, and I will repeat this information whenever appropriate to level the playing field a little.


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

Read this blog starting here to find out more about computerized fraud.


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]

Any public trading records available on Armstrong? He apparently did OK trading metals some years back for DB which he likes to show on his blog http://s3.amazonaws.com/armstrongeconomics-wp/2014/01/DeustcheBank-Fund.pdf but that's pretty much the only thing he's posted as far as trading record. Nothing else, and it is probably because the others don't look so nice.

There is another private blog out about gold and a rally. I'm sure his sub 1000 gold crash will pan out someday...

Armstrong claims to have said in front of a large gathering at some kind of conference in the 80's that he said the market would crash in days due to a large gap in the Reversals which was Black Monday- a long shot, but anyone have it on tape? Or a record he traded it? I don't think Armstrong has any record or else he would have shown it by now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLCkRxrfo10
at 22 mins
Michael Campbell says Armstrong called him directly that day to tell him the high in the Nikkei was in (Dec 89). 
Do you trust his word?

[AnonymousCoder]

Value of this Blog Space, Transparency

Regarding Martin Armstrong, I feel very grateful for the existence of this bitcointalk blog space, how it helps discover the truth.

We need both more transparency and privacy. The person who perhaps understands this best with his philosophy is Julian Assange. I donated the money I saved from no longer subscribing to Socrates to Assange's defense fund.

I recommend to look at portrait photos of both persons Julian Assange and Martin Armstrong, compare and let this sink in. Regarding Julian Assange, I can say, what a wonderful person.


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

Read this blog starting here to find out more about computerized fraud.


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

[AnonymousCoder]

Economic Advice by Martin Armstrong

MA so thoroughly discredits himself in many blog posts, only a complete idiot would take any of his advice.

Take for example his ideas on food security:

Local Food a Good Idea for Economic Freedom

Local Food a Good Idea for Economic Freedom
Posted Feb 5, 2016 by Martin Armstrong
Sorry for the typo, this is a good idea for those who want to look at having a back-up for the future. But this idea should also be taken seriously in places that need to import food. The number one reason politicians have stated that Greece should remain in the euro is that they have to import their food. This would eliminate the majority of that problem. I strongly recommend Greeks look at this technology. It can also provide economic freedom from the EU.


The Way of the Future

The Way of the Future
Posted Feb 5, 2016 by Martin Armstrong
One of the more vital technological advancements has been developed. They can grow all the necessary food without farmland from inside a warehouse that is completely free from genetic tinkering or chemical whatever.
This technology and has been doing a bang-up job around the world. It would probably not be a bad idea to set one up in a basement for the years ahead. This is the way of the future ? fresh food coming from your basement.


So here we go. Expand your basement to the size of a few acres and grow wheat, rice and potatoes.

Just as a footnote, even unrefined crude oil is more expensive than grain by weight, and there will not be an economic replacement on a significant scale for open air agriculture powered by the sun to produce the food that humans need. Ever.


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

Read this blog starting here to find out more about computerized fraud.


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

[PennyWiseUK]

Hello everybody, greetings from UK.

I’ve lurked this board for some time but I have been LOVING this board for the last few weeks.

Thanks so much to all posters, particularly those sharing brave admissions, diligent research results, and WEC experiences.

I am NOT a trader and have no wish to be; it simply doesn’t interest me. I do invest, and I like to buy the dips, in unit trusts (mutual funds) that focus on UK and overseas equities with active management, although my US equity exposure is mostly via passive (index) funds.

I was put on to MA by a stockbroker friend around 2012/2013 and was very attracted to MA writings. I’ve always felt that with enough information you can determine pattern/s which you can use to your advantage. I was attracted enough to purchase metals reports in 2015.

My interest in MA has grown steadily and I echo all the points raised in on this board, including my own impression that the Reversals seem to stand up. My particular issue is that MA has talked about being there for the little guy but if seasoned traders like you guys are struggling, the little guy has no hope. When a little guy gets a post onto the blog, MA does not directly answer the question.

I think the new Socrates system has one tier too many, the earlier system (before the monthly subscription) had two levels and that seemed to work and I was interested in the basic investor service at $150 per year. I accept he cannot be giving out free info that people have paid for but let’s say a clear low in the Dow has taken place, why not say ‘this would appear to be a good buying point‘.  The pros/traders can trade such a low from the Reversals, the investors could get a prompt from the private blog, and then perhaps a little later on the public blog publish the info. Everybody gets a piece of the pie, and it might attract people to subscribe. The new system makes only the Pro version worthwhile and that looks strictly for traders only.

To be fair to MA I have made some money from the public blog and helped my confidence in investing. MA used to write a lot about USD/YEN (I think before he tried again with Socrates) so after laying out money for the metals reports (and deciding to leave Gold until it goes under $1,000 per oz) I went long USD/YEN using an ETF and I made back the fee I paid for the reports (about £200), which as a non-trader was a great result. Using his general advice that markets are headed up I have been braver to invest and have benefited. I accept we have been in a QE fuelled bull run since March 2009 and I could have got the same ‘advice’ elsewhere but MA was giving long-term new-highs equity forecasts and they have been correct, as has his general call that GBP will fall against USD so I probably have more exposure to US equities than I otherwise would and that works great for a £GBP investor.

As a non-trader investor what intrigues me was his statement a little while ago that he might license Socrates to a fund management group. It is hard to be objective about his calls if the manner of investment differs between individuals and the risk/reward consideration is often overlooked, but an openly marketed registered fund would surely put to rest any argument about the validity of Socrates as it would be judged against its peers for all to see. I don’t mean it has to beat all its peers over every time frame but if it could provide regular positive returns with low risk (high Sharpe Ratio/high Information Ratio etc) then that would attract a lot of money and fulfil his stated commitment to the little guy.

[AnonymousCoder]

...
As a non-trader investor what intrigues me was his statement a little while ago that he might license Socrates to a fund management group. It is hard to be objective about his calls if the manner of investment differs between individuals and the risk/reward consideration is often overlooked, but an openly marketed registered fund would surely put to rest any argument about the validity of Socrates as it would be judged against its peers for all to see. I don't mean it has to beat all its peers over every time frame but if it could provide regular positive returns with low risk (high Sharpe Ratio/high Information Ratio etc) then that would attract a lot of money and fulfil his stated commitment to the little guy.

That is propaganda or wishful thinking. It is not going to happen for multiple reasons. First MA was in jail for so many years for financial missteps where he lost large amounts of other people's money. No way that a fund management group would want to get anywhere near his services. The second reason is that if it was realistic, then MA would do it himself and make big money. As MA admits numerous times, everybody acts in his own interests. The third reason is that big money cannot invest following signals emitted by the Socrates system. Their acquisitions have to be made over long periods of time using hidden orders. They usually have to buy when the market is declining. Socrates does not emit buy signals on lows or declines. If, for example they would buy at the election of a Bullish Reversal, it would be devastating because they would drive the price up with their large orders too much to be profitable. Different dynamics.

MA survives in this niche area where he makes money from selling services to retail investors with limited experience, the reports, and conferences. His dream is to create a business detached from his personality like Socrates. Once he retires, the system will collapse. There is no business model. Armstrong cannot grow. That is because any computer based trading system defeats itself naturally as soon as a significant number of people start trading based on it. Especially a system like Socrates which is single dimensional and cannot adapt because it is not using AI at all. You can say that you have been successful because you followed the wider trend which is fine. But that is what I call single observation based statistics. In contrast, I have taken hundreds of predictions made by Socrates and found that it is not better than tossing a coin. Surely a large scale manager will come to the same conclusions that I did, further complicating the situation. No way.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12240520


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

Read this blog starting here to find out more about computerized fraud.


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

[AnonymousCoder]

Socrates Investor Level Track Record

Just an example, a very mild one.

1) I am choosing monthly buy and sell signals. These are less frequent than weekly signals, so the risk is reduced compared with weekly signals. The Investor Level report has both weekly and monthly signals.

2) I am choosing a an ETF, "GLD Miners" GDX, which should be easier to manage for Socrates because it is correlated with Gold, which is where Armstrong should have significant experience, and where I found generally better performance than with stocks.

The signal I am tracking is at the end of the report:

We have generated a (buy|sell) signal so some caution is required.

I buy when the first buy signal appears, and I reverse my position when the signal reverses to a sell signal.

Between 2016-06-07 and 2019-06-14, Socrates made 7 such reversals between buy and sell. The trades result in a loss of 35% of the initial capital. Only one trade was a gain. This proves that the trade signals that Socrates emits are on average buy the high, sell the low.

It is fair to say that this software is a piece of rubbish, and tossing a coin actually gives a better result.
Martin Armstrong is a charlatan, and he spent 11 years in jail for that reason but he has not changed.

Read this blog starting here to find out more about computerized fraud.


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

[olegrey]

Interesting that on the same day of my post where I covered this relativity MA answers a user question https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/training-tools/reversals-timing/ which clearly shows that Weekly Reversals are not valid standalone, but subject to the human interpretation of both weekly and daily forecast arrays which may negate the Reversal to mean the opposite or limit the validity to one day only. This in addition to the 1% rule and the not so rare superposition event. This reduces the confidence with what they can be traded to zero. I am just considering what seems to be the consensus in this group that the forecast arrays are much too ambiguous to be considered reliable. Here it is set in stone that they are strictly part of the Reversal system.

Here is the critical question to answer:

This is a computer based system, right? Using AI and so forth? Bullshit.

Someone please tell me that a computer cannot figure out these conditions and come up with a clear answer that the poor user has to find by navigating this maze? Give me a break! This is disgusting. Only people who want to be deceived, want to be lied to will believe this. Either MA does not know how to write computer programs, or he knows it is not possible and keeps beating around the bush. I said it before. The more time you try learning this stuff, the more time you spend losing money. The result is the same that his system does not work.

In other words, the forecast arrays will mostly not agree with the Reversals. So when the Reversals are good and you trade them, then you ignore the forecast arrays, fine. If you however take them seriously, then you do not trade and lose an opportunity. On the other hand, if the Reversals are bad, then it is your fault if you ignored the forecast arrays. Pick your poison.

What was the timeframe you used to determine if the daily/weekly/monthly elected reversal was a failure?

Very simple. For daily I compared the next day close with the current day close. For weekly I compared the next week end close with the elected end of week close. For monthly I applied one month. If the 1% rule applied, and / or if there was a superposition event, then I assumed a trade in the opposite direction. This would normally give more favorable results. I know that this could be negated by Armstrong's instructions that I wrote about in my previous post, but there is no way to do this in a systematic fashion - it is chaos. I actually aborted weekly reversal trades, according to Armstrong rules - chaos. This effectively converts weekly reversals into daily reversals so to speak, defeating their purpose. Result? Sharply reduced profits / losses. It is more like not trading, losing opportunities. So I decided to stick with a simple reproducible scheme which is a kind of an average, the most objective way from my perspective. Otherwise it cannot be systematic. Last not least, new reversals are elected on a weekly cycle every week, so one has to keep in step with that. That is perhaps the strongest argument for trading them like that. Same for daily. New reversals are elected every day, often in opposite directions. So I cannot evaluate them for longer than their respective period. I have accumulated a very large number of reversals over the years, and I have to say that volume is really necessary for this evaluation. For example, there are weeks where the stock market rallies and Socrates elects bullish reversals. If it is lucky, then there are a number of good reversals this week because a large number of symbols that were available to me are correlated with the stock market, perhaps even Crude Oil, making this a good week. Then the next week it is the opposite, all bad. I found that the monthly reversals are just as terrible as the daily ones. The biggest problem is that with a number of symbols to choose from, Socrates will not tell you which one to trade. MA and his staff always cherry pick the successful recent ones after the fact and say: See, what an amazing system. Nobody talks about the other 50% - the bad signals and trades.

Socrates should provide historical dumps of past elected reversals so everybody can assess past performance like I did. Honestly, doing this is a full time job. Other financial services keep a record of good and bad trades, such as etfguide.com. Not doing this is dishonest. If other manual services can provide this, an automated system like Socrates can provide it with much less effort. There is really no excuse.

I think I see a problem with your methodology.  If you refer to page 28 of the model and methodology on armstrong's blog you will see that,

"The election of a reversal normally indicated that the expected high or low that should
unfold could take place in as short a time span as 1 to 3 units of time (i.e. daily, weekly,
monthly, or quarterly). Therefore, a low may develop the very next day following the
election of a Daily Bearish Reversal or within the next few days. The same is true for all
price activity levels."

https://d33wjekvz3zs1a.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ModelsMethodologies.SecondEdition.pdf

Therefore your study only allowed for 1/3 of the time needed to fully test the reversals.  Honestly a 50% success rate in 1/3 of the time allotted is pretty good.  Would you be willing to share your data, hopefully in excel or google sheets format, so that we can fully get the bottom of these reversals?  I'd be willing to input the next two time units when I get the time.

Also how were you able to collect all the reversals for your study?  Did you get them from a premium subscription or from the private blog?  I ask because I want to be sure they came from a legitimate source to add legitimacy to this thorough study.  Thank you  

[AnonymousCoder]

...
Therefore your study only allowed for 1/3 of the time needed to fully test the reversals. Honestly a 50% success rate in 1/3 of the time allotted is pretty good. Would you be willing to share your data, hopefully in excel or google sheets format, so that we can fully get the bottom of these reversals? I'd be willing to input the next two time units when I get the time.

Also how were you able to collect all the reversals for your study? Did you get them from a premium subscription or from the private blog? I ask because I want to be sure they came from a legitimate source to add legitimacy to this thorough study. Thank you

The reversals I got from the two highest subscription levels not the blog. Still the collection of that many reversals is a very labor intensive process as you can imagine. You are correct that my methodology has a problem because I used a fixed time window for trading them. As I pointed out earlier, according to a recent Armstrong article, a weekly reversal may need to be traded between only a single day and 3 weeks. When you read this article https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/training-tools/reversals-timing/, and https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/training-tools/trading-against-the-reversals/, and you acknowledge that the interpretation of forecast arrays is a subjective process, where you may need to even trade against them, and you know how unreliable the forecast arrays are, then you understand what the ambiguity is that I am talking about.

Every trickster or con man with a ponzi scheme has some kind of trick to confuse you and this is the trick - where the trading of reversals is so ambiguous that there are literally hundreds of ways to trade them. This is the back door for him to be always right in hindsight. There is no way to methodically test them using this ambiguity. If we do not understand that and if we try to follow this ambiguity then we are idiots by spending an infinite amount of energy to prove or disprove his system. In other words, the system is extremely limited, I would say not a computer system but manual because it does not say for how long to trade a reversal.

I have a choice between a) where because of this endless ambiguity, the system is not a tradeable system or b) I draw a line in the sand and measure success by trading it exactly for a single time period (which is what I did). In fact I think a) AND b) so I reject the system as a whole as a scam, and do the test based on b) only for demonstration purposes. Otherwise, if you read all my posts, I have thoroughly discredited the system - there is not much I can add.

In other words, there is no exact method to test an ambiguous system. Ambiguous is kind of the opposite of exact so how is that possible?

You ask me to share the data. Perhaps at some future point. But by doing so, I would play into Armstrong's hands where he can effectively attack just a few reversals and make them look right in hindsight and start an endless discussion, thereby forcing me to spend even more energy on this rubbish. I prefer to point out the flaws in the system such as ambiguity and deception, and the fact that it does not provide historical data. Let's ask customer support to provide that historical data on a daily basis. Like other services do. That would be the correct way to handle this.

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

Read this blog starting here to find out more about computerized fraud.


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

[trulycoined]

Another "office being built story" from 2013 - only this time, MA wasn't lying...

Lazy Sunday evening so was trawling through some old MA blog posts (2013) and found another oddity. At the time, he seemed to be obsessed with the privacy concerns of Windows 8 and how he was "moving" his technical operations and blog to Switzerland, plus migrating his systems to LUNUX. That seemed to be a recurring theme through the first half of 2013.

Jan 2019 2013
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/international-advisory-board/

MA explains he is setting up an "International Advisory Board" to counter the hugely corrupt politicians of the world. I've been reading his blog since 2016 and have heard no mention of this "Board" in that time.

MA explains the "International Think Tank operation under construction in Switzerland", with a photo of the new office, which has the file name:

new-office-2.jpg


In May of that same year, another article that speaks of the "International Advisory Board", posting the same image again, which is presumably the new office building that is under construction:

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/inflation-is-inevitable-but-its-the-interest-rates-we-better-watch/

With the virtual office "fib" in St Pete, it would be interesting to verify if this "Board" even exists in that office building. I did a reverse image search of said building but could not find anything. Searching something more obvious on G Image Search: "switzerland office buildings" and I eventually came across a building that looked like a match, albeit from a very different angle. It was the same building.

It is called Kirk Hus and building work was indeed completed in 2013, and that uncovered MA's operations. The thing is, unless it was MA's awkward wording, the office is leased. It was not being built solely for MA:
https://www.german-architects.com/ca/philip-loskant-architekt-eth-sia-zurich/project/burohaus-neufeld-kirk-hus

Turns out he set up Princeton Economics Research Institute AG in 2012, and then liquidated the business in 2016:
https://www.easymonitoring.ch/fr/registre-du-commerce/princeton-economics-research-institute-ag-1110325
https://business-monitor.ch/de/companies/573195-princeton-economics-research-institute-ag-in-liquidation

That is why he never mentioned it again after 2016. It had around $1m in capital at the time.

The MD - a hedge fund manager - has since set up a startup called MeetInvest:
https://meetinvest.com/

So turns out he didn't end up changing the world, but I cannot knock him for trying.

p.s. this "international advisory board" appears to only have three people sitting on it. Not sure if that qualifies as a "board".

[trulycoined]

Also from 2013 blog posts, so interesting to analyse forecast accuracy. The major call of 2015.75 is further revealed to be dubious, with yet more ambiguity over what was supposed to happen, from his blog posts to media interviews a few years later.

Back in 2013, MA explained that the rising dollar will turn "the US economy into recession from 2015.75", while EU trade would decline:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/back-to-the-future/
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/unemployment-the-lowest-since-2008/

Alas that never happened, while EU trade was flat and began increasing into 2017.

Another 2013 forecast was that "we are indeed in a bull market for volatility and when everything turns again with 2015.75 on the ECM, the volatility will be twice as high as what we experienced between 2007-2009" for the EUR/USD and JPY/USD:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/real-estate-beats-gold-as-1-investment-euro-yen-recap/

EUR after 2015.75 was practically flat for years on end, while JPY spiked into 2016 and then remained quite flat. The volatility was nothing like 2007-2009, which was incredibly choppy.

I suppose MA can argue it away where - like Japan - intervention to prevent the inevitable merely extends the cycle. He, or Socrates more specifically, is therefore never wrong even though if the machine really did know everything to the day, should it not also factor in the predictable human behaviour of fire fighting an inevitable fate, and so call the actual date?

And with stocks, he also called AAPL completely wrong, explaining the share buy-back in 2013 was the time to sell:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/stock-buy-backs-bad-idea/

That was in fact the best opportunity to buy since the financial crisis of 2008 and had you, you'd be up at least 3x by now. Why didn't Socrates recognise this "pattern" and give a clear BUY signal?

[olegrey]

...
Therefore your study only allowed for 1/3 of the time needed to fully test the reversals.  Honestly a 50% success rate in 1/3 of the time allotted is pretty good.  Would you be willing to share your data, hopefully in excel or google sheets format, so that we can fully get the bottom of these reversals?  I'd be willing to input the next two time units when I get the time.

Also how were you able to collect all the reversals for your study?  Did you get them from a premium subscription or from the private blog?  I ask because I want to be sure they came from a legitimate source to add legitimacy to this thorough study.  Thank you  

The reversals I got from the two highest subscription levels not the blog. Still the collection of that many reversals is a very labor intensive process as you can imagine. You are correct that my methodology has a problem because I used a fixed time window for trading them. As I pointed out earlier, according to a recent Armstrong article, a weekly reversal may need to be traded between only a single day and 3 weeks. When you read this article https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/training-tools/reversals-timing/, and https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/training-tools/trading-against-the-reversals/, and you acknowledge that the interpretation of forecast arrays is a subjective process, where you may need to even trade against them, and you know how unreliable the forecast arrays are, then you understand what the ambiguity is that I am talking about.

Every trickster or con man with a ponzi scheme has some kind of trick to confuse you and this is the trick - where the trading of reversals is so ambiguous that there are literally hundreds of ways to trade them. This is the back door for him to be always right in hindsight. There is no way to methodically test them using this ambiguity. If we do not understand that and if we try to follow this ambiguity then we are idiots by spending an infinite amount of energy to prove or disprove his system. In other words, the system is extremely limited, I would say not a computer system but manual because it does not say for how long to trade a reversal.

I have a choice between a) where because of this endless ambiguity, the system is not a tradeable system or b) I draw a line in the sand and measure success by trading it exactly for a single time period (which is what I did). In fact I think a) AND b) so I reject the system as a whole as a scam, and do the test based on b) only for demonstration purposes. Otherwise, if you read all my posts, I have thoroughly discredited the system - there is not much I can add.

In other words, there is no exact method to test an ambiguous system. Ambiguous is kind of the opposite of exact so how is that possible?

You ask me to share the data. Perhaps at some future point. But by doing so, I would play into Armstrong's hands where he can effectively attack just a few reversals and make them look right in hindsight and start an endless discussion, thereby forcing me to spend even more energy on this rubbish. I prefer to point out the flaws in the system such as ambiguity and deception, and the fact that it does not provide historical data. Let's ask customer support to provide that historical data on a daily basis. Like other services do. That would be the correct way to handle this.

I am not saying your methodology is wrong because it uses a fix timeframe window.  I am saying that it is wrong because your window is too small.  You need to increase the timeframe to 3 time units (days, weeks, months, etc).  As I said, I am willing to do this I just need your initial data.  I believe that you are very close to an answer about the legitimacy of the reversals, you just had the timeframe too short.  I am willing to do all the work, you won't have to spend any more energy on proving or disproving the system.  I am sending you my email in a private message so that the data won't be public

Your settings won't allow a private message from newbies.  Please change this setting so you can receive my private message with my email

[AnonymousCoder]

Simplicity is better

I started shorting Brazil last week when it had the temp high. Low risk high reward. Simple to find.

No single signal in Socrates about it, actually it is still bullish from what I have heard. So far, profitable even while the start was a bit scary.

So what would have happened had I traded Socrates?

Weekly reversals elected 2019-06-07, traded for a week Friday to Friday close 2019-06-07 to 2019-06-14

$DXY weekly bearish 1% loss
EUR/USD weekly bullish 1.1% loss
GDAX weekly bullish 0.4% gain
SENSEX weekly bullish 0.4% loss
USD/CAD weekly bearish 1.0% loss
USD/CHF weekly bearish 1.2% loss
Visa weekly bullish 0.2% loss
Cotton weekly bearish 0.5% loss
Heating oil weekly bearish 0.3% loss
Natural gas weekly bearish 2.1% loss

That is a fairly good cross section of the market, of what was elected, I guess. One winner.

I would not want to extend this depressing experiment by another two weeks waiting while these trades come right while I can have a profit within a week with something better.

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

Read this blog starting here to find out more about computerized fraud.


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

[bleachberu]

Hi All,

I found this thread when someone posted on the slack channel that I follow. Basically the channel where a few of us from WEC hang out and discuss the system. I'm also subscribed to his basic membership.

Spent the past week reading the last 20% of this long thread and thank all the contributors for sharing the light on MA and the system. I've also had my frustrations with the Socrates system. All the reasons have been well explained already, so no need for me to add. The net result, it is not usable for trading. I'm also disappointed because when I first learned of MA (from work colleagues), I was amazed at his story and naively got sucked into the hype, attending 2 WECs in Asia when he had them here. (was frustrated with that also because Day 1 was just blog recap day but I enjoyed meeting other like minded attendees and made friends). Naturally, like many, I was extremely interested in the so-called Dow sling-shot move. I missed the GFC opportunity to invest and plan to go all-in on the next, which is overdue in my view due to QE. Hence, that desire made me more excited about his call because it resonated with what I wanted for myself...

As for the private blogs, I do find them interesting occasionally but again, the results are mixed at best. I do copy them out to powerpoint, just to keep track of his calls but as you many of you know, the gaps between the reversals are often so wide that it not helpful.

For the public blogs, he does post interesting stuff once in a while and helps me to look at the world with a less than rosy lens so I continue to read them. Some of the blogs posting are completely bizzare to me at least, so I just shrug and move on.

Having said all that, I am still subscribed to his macro view on a few things (they haven't played out 100% but it seems to be heading in the direction he's been calling for but again timing is everything right?):

1. Euro bearishness and ECB/Draghi role in the bond market/debt consolidation issue
2. Rise of populist parties in Europe, eventually leading to a breakup of the EU (I first read about the immigration issues in Europe causing strain from his blog to be fair)
3. Next crisis to stem from the broken/zombie pension system which requires the magic 8% return to satisfy their future obligations as baby boomers start retiring and drawing down
4. Climate change - haven't made up my mind entirely on this one but it does seem that all the early research (Al Gore stuff) is baloney and I do observe increasingly extreme weather patterns globally

The reason I still subscribe to some of the above is because I do have a background in finance and currently work in markets. These issues do make sense to me and interestingly, never discussed formerly on wall street. I'm always a student of the markets and look to external views to supplement my wall street ones (and avoid group think).

Anyway, many thanks to all here who have opened my eyes. I'm going to start taking MA/Socrates with a tablespoon of salt from now on. Will keep my $15 subscription but no more conferences for me.

Cheers,
B

[bleachberu]

Separately, anyone here follow worldscycle institute? It's another paid service but with free blogs. I'm not subscribed to its paid service yet, just tracking it's calls.

Think he got 2017 wrong big time but the author did admit it...can see there's a wealth of info that's using EW etc. More conventional and no deep state stuff conspiracy stuff. Just markets and EW counting.

Cheers,
B

[AnonymousCoder]

...

Anyway, many thanks to all here who have opened my eyes. I'm going to start taking MA/Socrates with a tablespoon of salt from now on. Will keep my $15 subscription but no more conferences for me.

Good approach. I would recommend to search the original material that he is copying from / aggregating on his blog. He publishes 3rd party but original material that is not necessarily easy to find. One has to give him credit for that. As far as economics is concerned and the theme of western civilization declining, nothing new. Much more to learn from Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Julian Assange. The themes are loss of accountability, the fundamental problem of delegation and the need to regulate the capitalist system which is exploitative by nature. The interesting thing to me is that Assange actually has a solution: Transparency. Well, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts recommends to go to Russia. Not too bad a call when I look at their stock market. But is this an option we are looking for?

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

Read this blog starting here to find out more about computerized fraud.


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

[olegrey]

Simplicity is better

I started shorting Brazil last week when it had the temp high. Low risk high reward. Simple to find.

No single signal in Socrates about it, actually it is still bullish from what I have heard. So far, profitable even while the start was a bit scary.

So what would have happened had I traded Socrates?

Weekly reversals elected 2019-06-07, traded for a week Friday to Friday close 2019-06-07 to 2019-06-14

$DXY weekly bearish 1% loss
EUR/USD weekly bullish 1.1% loss
GDAX weekly bullish 0.4% loss
SENSEX weekly bullish 0.4% loss
USD/CAD weekly bearish 1.0% loss
USD/CHF weekly bearish 1.2% loss
Visa weekly bullish 0.2% loss
Cotton weekly bearish 0.5% loss
Heating oil weekly bearish 0.3% loss
Natural gas weekly bearish 2.1% loss

That is a fairly good cross section of the market, of what was elected, I guess. No winner.

I would not want to extend this depressing experiment by another two weeks waiting while these trades come right while I can have a profit within a week with something better.

It's great that you can make a profit from your trades, but this forum is about the merits of the Socrates system.  From your posts I can see that you are claiming martin is a fraud from your experiment, but as I said before, in his manual he said,

"The election of a reversal normally indicated that the expected high or low that should
unfold could take place in as short a time span as 1 to 3 units of time (i.e. daily, weekly,
monthly, or quarterly). Therefore, a low may develop the very next day following the
election of a Daily Bearish Reversal or within the next few days. The same is true for all
price activity levels."  

As you can see he said that an elected reversal may not come to fruition until 3 units of time after the election.  Your experiment proves nothing unless you go by his timeframe of 3 time units.  Your collection of data is truly is impressive, if it is what you say it is.  But your methodology is faulty and therefore proves nothing.  For example, lets say a weekly bullish reversal is elected but the expected raise in price doesn't come until 3 weeks after the reversal.  Your experiment would label that as a failed reversal even though it was successful by martin's method.  If you truly want to prove he is a fraud, make the data available so that we can put the final nail in his coffin.  If the experiment fails by the timeframe of 3 units, then he has no wiggle room, we will have successfully and conclusively shown that he is a fraud by his own methodology.  I assume you want to "save" people from martin.  If we can prove his 3 units of time is faulty I will be completely convinced he is a fraud, but until we can successfully prove it, I won't be satisfied taking your word for it.  Like I said, you won't have to put in any additional work, I will do all the input for the additional 2 time units.  Also like I said, if you don't want to make it publicly available, enable private messages from newbies and I'll message you my email.  If you don't want to private message, I'll post a throwaway email on this message board.  I just want to fully prove he is a fraud, but I need your help.  You have the data, I have the methodology.  

[olegrey]

In regards to my previous post, I'd also like to add Expected Profit and Potential Loss. Expected Profit would be the distance between the current price at close of the election of a Reversal and the next Reversal. Potential Loss would be a stop behind the Reversal after election. This is more subjective, as stops are different and Socrates/Armstrong does not have a specific system for that. Also the R:R for each trade can be added beforehand and the ones better than 1:1 might hypothetically be traded.

It's just that I don't remember bad things about the Reversal performance in themselves, which is the only point of doubt. Even the Euro short had a Monthly Bearish which it bounced off from perfectly. The long side couldn't have been traded but it was the correct point to close shorts. I want to be as objective about this as possible using purely Socrates, so there won't be things like the 1% rule, arrays, trading against Reversals, and so on. Only election based trade performance will be analyzed. The calls will only be based on the ones in the Private Blog. I noticed that Socrates kept changing some of the Weekly Reversals in the textual analysis and so I wasn't sure which was the 'real' or 'fixed' one. It may be that it can do technical analysis well even if everything else is trash. We'll see.

I appreciate what you are doing! I understand this undertaking is a big ordeal that will take a lot of time. My only ask is that you make it publicly available so that we can analyze your findings for ourselves.  I mean what's the point of posting findings if we can't go through the data and come to the same conclusions.