Topic: Martin Armstrong Discussion - page 125. (Read 647176 times)

2 of them are private groups but ECM-Traders slack group I can send invitations to anyone who wants to join, just send me your email in a pvt message and you will receive a Slack invitation to join ECM-Traders.

As WEC attendee you will receive some basic instructions and examples how to use Socrates. Most of the conference is dedicated to historical roundup of the markets and one of the most expensive history classes I ever attended.

People which aren´t already experts in technical analysis and have developed a good trading plan will not came out of the conference or after reading their materials with one solid plan.

"Everyone got a plan until they got punch in the face", if you didn't had a solid trading/investing plan before attending the Conference maybe you will get out of it with the Confidence you need to put some $ on the line and get your first punches in the face as wake up call.

Most of the things in Socrates are 100 years old technical analysis stuff, some of them with new fancy names. ARRAY´s on it´s "core" could be described as fancy representation of Cycles, Energy are just Momentum Oscillator. Indicative Ranges and Pivots were calculated and widely used by pit traders on NYSE, CME, CBOT long time before Socrates "born" and still been used as reference for support/resistance/reversals levels. What is unique on Socrates database is the amount of data it have on some key markets like metals which have +2000 years of data. As I said before, Socrates is mostly a huge database, is up to you to came out with a winning strategy to approach the markets. 

For my 1st impression, the members of this discussion group that had come to comment are discussion something they´ve no experience as never attended a Martin Armstrong Conference, aren´t Socrates subscribers. So just hearsay, gossip stuff.

On your defence, I must say if I ever come close to have the perfect trading system, I would not looking to sell it on a Conference/Report. I would open a Prop shop, hire and train traders to trade for me and make great $ for us like I did back on the years I played poker professional.  

Trading the financial markets are just like playing poker, it takes you 10 minutes to learn how to do it and learn all the rules, but it generally take long painful years to begin to Master it...  there´s no short-cuts to years of experience.

I attended his Orlando WEC 2018. I was no more clear on what the Arrays are or how to use them. He did regurgitate a lot of content from his blog, however, I will admit a lot of what he discussed (particularly the EU) was very interesting, especially as I am European and flew across the Atlantic to attend/meet MA (at the evening event for his "legendary" (CRINGE) hors d'oeuvres).

So I left his event feeling somewhat pleased to have met MA; ask him a question about his model that he didn't seem to like; and then come to my own conclusions about his legitimacy, which was a large part of my reason for attending. I was prepared to lose money to admit my misjudgement. And on that note I felt I knew somewhat more about global macroeconomics, and also was armed with ideas for investments over the next 5 years (commodity boom from 2020-2024, with CA and AU stock markets set for a boom), but that is about it. I still did not properly understand his ECM and nor how to trade reversals/turning points.

In short, I do not feel more confident trading having attended his WEC or even following his work past 2-3 years.

I spoke to one young guy from CA who explained he was a day trader from his bedroom. Allegedly he did use Socrates and was "successful" with it. Another person I spoke to was an institutional investor who seemed somewhat more sceptical of the trading platform, but seemed to be open to the idea of cycles predicting the future.

The problem is this though: a lot of what he talks about is so deep in economics it is difficult to even fact check. Made worse as the mass media would not write about what he talks about since it would panic markets or even citizens. So you then must rely on his (Socrates) calls. That said, you can find "official" resources from the likes of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, which covers some similar themes. But then maybe MA plagiarises a lot of content from multiple sources, re-writes it, and passes it off as his own?

That is very common in the "guru" space in multiple industries from finance to marketing and sales...

Additionally, some of the content on his blog is poorly cited or even outright bogus. Only the other week he posted an article that was later deleted explaining that Macron had passed a law making it illegal for French schools to teach Italian. I thought that was bizarre so went to find other sources. Alas I found nothing, and the post on MA's site was eventually deleted. Things like that make me question his credibility. If he is some sage that is reliant - in his own words - on his machine and not personal opinion, then how comes he writes about such irreverent BS at times? It is exactly what Barclay Lieb stated.

I am waiting for the flashpoint/reversal this month. It is now the 23 May and nothing particularly exciting has happened, yet MA had May as an important month, if not for political turmoil with the EU elections. Thing is, that could have been easily predicted by most people, since the right has been rising now for years' and his buddy Farage would likely have told him of his plans to launch the Brexit Party long ago.

That is the problem and I why I started questioning his work. How much of it is opinion and forecasts from Socrates? And just how accurate is Socrates?

At the Orlando WEC, there was a lot of chatter among the attendees over what the November pi day might be about. It ranged from italy to Brexit. Or it was a reversal and like the butterfly effect, it was something that would set a trend in motion and come to explode in X years time. All seemed too ambiguous and even infantile at times.

I also spoke to someone who seemed a bit unhinged, explaining they also read ZEROHEDGE. That site is like the David Icke of the financial world and is run by Eastern Europeans from the old Soviet bloc, while the American I was speaking to probably thought it was some (no doubt US-based) source of virtuous financial analysis. I would take what they write about with a heavy pinch of salt and yet that seems to be some of MA's readership, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable as (at the time) an avid MA follower. I am just not that type of ret*rd.

I was sent various PDFs in the up to the event, including the "Trade of the Century" document, at 280 pages long. Most of it is a look back at history as other posters have mentioned above. Rich in content if you like reading a load of fluffer content that hides two pages of actual analysis. Below is lifted from the very last page. Make of it what you will:

"The trade of the 21st Century will be the shift from Public to Private. However, each phase will come in stages pushing the next into motion. With the bulk of the analysts all bearish predicting 5,000 on the Dow, one must simply ask the question – so where is the Flight to Quality?

We can see that when the dollar was in trouble during the 1890s, the flight to quality was not to equities nor bonds. It was to the British pound. The roles are reversed. Europe is now in deep trouble and as such the flight to quality will be to the USA. As that capital comes in, the smart money will turn to equities. AT first, there will be a flight to short-term US Treasury paper just as Mellon said in April 1929. But when government’s survivability comes into question, then the capital will turn and flee from the bonds to the private sector. So, pay attention to also how the yield spread between corporate and governments will narrow. This will be another confirmation that we have a massive shift underway from Public to Private assets. Each sector will perform according to its place in the domino chain. The risk of the dollar rising first can have a negative impact upon commodities. Then when capital turns and fears the US government, then the dollar will crash and we will witness the rise in commodities including gold."

I posted this link before, and I'm not sure why no one reads it.  But here is the cut & paste of just some of the contents from that link, where somebody posted comments about Armstrong's conference.  Boldface is my highlights:

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=694414

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I did attend Martin Armstrong conference couple years ago and believe me it’s a complete scam.

For 2 days he is going to repeat what you can read on his blog.

Coming to commenting his forecast array, someone else came in to talk about it, without giving any understanding clue to read it.

His pretended AI system is a complete scam, giving obfuscated informations making it useless.

I did buy some reports too after hundreds of pages of history in the last 3!pages finally some forecast written in a way that whatever append in the future he will be able to proclaim «I did tell you»

Half of the answered questions in his blog are fabricated to make him appearing a true genius.

He is able to twist any fact to make them fitting to his ECM.

He is brilliant to mix lies with accurate economics facts to seems honest.

For more than 5 years now he keeps saying that he will open his AI forecast system to everyone next month. Which has never append yet.

Read at insight about economy but for your own sake stay away of his forcasts.

He is unfortunately bias by anger toward the system and looking for fame.

If you dare question him, he will insult and call you stupid you as an answer.

My experience of MA.

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The whole post above is worth a read.  And I boldfaced that part, because Armstrong, like all other scammers, resort to use the "third person trick", to have another person to come in, so that you canNOT directly question him.  And of course, Armstrong interpreting Socrates without you being able to confront Socrates is also the "third person trick".

I read an actual Armstrong's report once from my friend.  The above comments are totally accurate.  95+% of the report talks about history, which has no  trading value, and that you cannot argue with, and the last 5% or like 2 to 3 pages, he/Socrates gave out ambiguous forecasts which you won't be able to say whether he is right or wrong in the future, and also means that those forecasts are NOT tradable because it doesn't tell you in clear words, whether it will be high or low for certain.

So IF you attend his conference, you will NOT learn anything very specific on HOW to use his array, or things to help you understand his models.

The bottom line is ALL of Armstrong's stuffs are NOT made to be clear (like the arrays).  Rather, they are made to be confusing, so that the final blame can be laid upon the readers, instead of him.

In the meantime, he can keep collecting all the subscriptions from people who think they can retire with yacht in 10 years, and who keeps to look for the "trade of century", and the sensational slingslot and vertical move, and that the super-AI computer will supposedly never go wrong.

Armstrong used "buy of the century" (the exact words) for gold in 2000.  And that's only two decades into this century.

Now, he continues his scheme and use "trade of century" for stocks, for a different crowd obviously.  And then he will keep doing this.  Pretty soon, his calling on commodity boom in 2024/5, and then he may use "trade of century" for agricultural products.

I'm not saying that Armstrong's calls are all wrong, but his strategy is basically making a call for a turning point in an extended run, hoping to strike a big home run.  And if you do that enough times, you will hit a home run for sure, not counting ALL the failed calls which can cause various trading losses.  On the average, if you follow him on every call, you probably will not come out ahead.  But Armstrong will only highlight the successful call.

(Repeatedly) making a call for a turning point in an extended run, eventually, will be right.  So he tried to call February panic, and it didn't happen.  And then he called again for May + July.  That is similar to his calls for big earthquake in California after big rainfall.

And by the way, he called for a plague raised to the INTERNATIONAL level (the final climax) this year 2019, starting from 2014 (I don't remember whether the starting year is 2014 or 2017).  2019 is almost half-way now.  There is NO international plague.  And don't worry, if there is one, Armstrong will surely be there, and tell you "I told you so".

But if there is nothing, how many people will remember his failed calls?

And remember his call on bitcoin bearish closing price for 2018 based on the yearly reversal prices?  Whoever shorted bitcoin based on Armstrong's advice would be at about negative 100% right now.

+1

As a WEC attendee do you receive and examples or training on how to use the socrates system? Are you taught how to use the array, Directional changes panic cycles in combinations with the reversals, what about the energy and indicating ranges, pivot points technical levels, does anyone use these?
There is a guide and old posts but you really have to look for the information on the website to try and figure it all out, and as you can see here there is a lot of discussion but there is no real agreement on how it all works.

Just curious what the wec people get what we don´t, maybe with that it clears up a lot.

thanks

@rosousa Many thanks for your input! By the way, do you have a link (eventually per PN) to the ECM Slack Groups ? I would be interested to join. Thanks

I agree with what you wrote about Socrates.

Sorry, I´m not here to discuss my performance or initiate a flame war. I´m not here either to defend Martin Armstrong or express my opinion about the person.

I´m here to discuss some of his work/models, which are valid and COULD give you a edge on the markets. Some of his models, are general math derivations and technical analysis stuff, I´m not interested in discuss it. I see value in discussion only their proprietary models.

GMW for me is trash, I trade numbers, not words/opinion or descriptions of what happening in the market;

ARRAY´s is a very complex way of representing cycles, I look at them before my final trading decision but don´t waste more than 10-20 seconds looking at it.

Reversals are the most valuable part of his work (it´s just my opinion)

ECM models and Pii cycles frequency are valuable at academic level, I see as a big improvement over most of economic models/theory on cycles but think have limited use as trading/investing tool.

Showing Armstrong's stuffs work is easy.  If you post 10 consecutive winning trades with 5+% gain using his models, then I think that there may be only about 1/(2^10) or 0.1% chance of Armstrong's models being incorrect, given that trading record.

Also Strike Eagle, apparently, such a great trader (who "made money" on "every" single trade), who was so familiar with Armstrong's stuffs,

REFUSED to even call out whether the panic cycle in May will be making a HIGH or LOW on a monthly basis on this forum.

The biggest problem that I had following with Armstrong's arrays is that you canNOT even decide whether each "turning point" or "directional change" is a HIGH or LOW, given the past market trajectory, because they were NOT consistently correct.

And then, there is cycle inversion that happens in the last minute, when the actual trades would have been in red for 20+%.

Please NOTE that this "cycle inversion" thing only starts to come out from his blog post-2011 approximately.  There is ZERO information from his timing array that gives you ANY indication on any cycle inversion.  Wouldn't you think that it is super-CRITICAL to know whether the cycle inversion will happen for his timing array, supposedly created for "cycles"?

So I figure that Martin Armstrong must have invented the "cycle inversion", after some of his glaring predictions failures.

And yeah, the GMW, global market watch, supposedly does all the pattern recognition??

I shriek when Armstrong claims that GMW is constantly learning.  Oh, yeah, "New Pattern Emerging"?  Guess what, GMW just found a new pattern that is an "outlier", and that could easily destroy anyone's trades currently in progress.  What are you going to do for your trades, if GMW finds a new pattern at the closing of its time period?  Well, you are screwed, but GMW is RIGHT, because it found a new pattern!!!  Congrats!!

GMW requires the closing prices, and that is looking back.  All of the TA (technical analysis) indicators that look back, all look GREAT on paper, but you cannot trade profitably from it.

Yeah, sure, you can do all of the "what if" analysis, by plugging in your projected closing prices for the TA.  However, all the "what if" analysis are invalid because they are NOT the real closing prices.  As Armstrong says, you let the market tells you.  So isn't that DIRECT contradictions that invalidate any "what if" studies?

Welcome to the master of dual-talk.  If market goes up, Armstrong is right.  If market goes down, Armstrong is right.  If you don't make money, it's your fault of not understanding his tools & models.  If you (happen to) make money (in this particular trade), oh, you just got that right.  Out of 1000 subscribers, I'm sure they all probably trade different ways, and I'm sure that Armstrong can find quite a few percentage of them who just happen to trade in the right direction.  Cherry-picking the winners guarantees winning trades.  How about helping the majority like 100% of the subscribers to be all trading successfully by posting real-time trade recommendations?

Oh, that's a NO-NO.  Not because Armstrong cannot post buy/sell.  But it's because his models are too complicate for human beings or regular traders to understand (on their own).  Or maybe or more likely, because Armstrong & Socrates is UNABLE to post winning trades consistently, and if Armstrong does that, all of the lies about his super-AI computer and "trading success" will be exposed in less than a year.

Why does Armstrong who is supposed to be a great trader, has no guts in posting any real-time trades for simple demonstration?  Oh, he wants you to PAY the subscription, right?  Oh, wait, I thought he is very charitable and concerned about the general public.

Instead, he blogs on BIIB taking a huge drop, POST-event.  In fact, ALL of the "readers' comments" for successful trades are POST-event.

You know what, I or anyone can do very well on paper, POST-event.

Is that how StrikeEagle made money on every single trade?  I doubt ANYONE on Earth who has ever made money on every single trade, except for people who has never traded, or just made a few limited single successful trades.

Can you be concise and to the point. I read it 5 times and still don´t get it.

1) I don´t claim anything;
2) If you were a member of any of the official Martin Armstrong / ECM-Traders slack group you would recognise me by the username as one of the most active members in the groups in last 4 years. I came to here because a new member on Socrates slack group that have attended WEC Rome few weeks ago have mention this group.

What is the point of telling everyone that you have "invented the airplane", and then tell them that this airplane requires 10+ years of training to master, and that there is no actual training provided along with the airplane?

Anyone can claim that he made a super-AI computer that predicts the future, and the problem of all the subscribers' failed trades is simply because all of them failed to understand this super-sophisticated 72 models.  The problem of failure is always on others, not being able to understand and decode the "array" and "reversals", and never on the models.

If you claim that Armstrong's stuffs are good, then DEMONSTRATE it.  Anybody can talk about the "past" success, and nobody can verify it, because there is no way to distinguish that from fake paper trades.

Since you have traded successfully using such, how about showing your monthly brokerage statements for gains and all the trades that you did.

And show that in this forum that you can do that in real-time too.

By the way, you seemed to be an old timer with Armstrong, and yet you are a newbie on this forum, when all of the previous newbies have disappeared one by one, Strike Eagle, DigiLab, etc.  And yeah, you pick up the trail where they left off in no time.

The beta testa of a software ends when it is released. It were released few months ago.

Anyway, Socrates is mainly a financial markets database cloud software, is trader´s choice what to do with the information to initiate a trade.

I use mostly Reversals and Cycles. On the following link--->https://cl . ly/cf36fd7b7cea" you find DOW JONES industrial futures (YM) trading ranges in last days. As you easily notice, the market reverse often on Reversals and/or elect them and accelerate move on the reversal election when that happen. With that information there all kind of trading strategies you could build around that. Trade in direction of reversals election, trade against reversals failed election (the trade I have open right now on DOW30), etc.    

on the link use "cl . ly" without spaces  (I waste +20 minutes trying to post a CloudApp link, for whatever reason the Forum erase it and sign the link as suspicious
 

They cut of the ability to see the Reversals from where they were generated/on generation that will allow us to easy filter "what if" reversals and "what if" scenarios trading approach. They cut that feature in charts.

More powerful and full of features? Can you elaborate? In what ways?

Correct. I been on beta testing user of Socrates since 2015. The 2015 release of Socrates were more powerful and full feature than the "pro" level being now offered. 

Socrates is just a software/financial instruments huge database. It´s up to you to filter the best resources define rules that fits your trading/investing goals and much more important, stick to them without emotional decisions overrules/violations.

I have with me soccer equipment that Cristiano Ronaldo used in one of his best exhibitions in last years, the same tools and could have him teaching me for 1 week how to play soccer and score amazing goals, that will make me a great soccer player in 1 week? in 1 year? in 5 years?!   

Now with new micros US stock indexes futures you should be able to hold positions overnight and let the market workout moves between the reversals. Socrates reversals numbers works great on very volatile markets like QQQ/NASDAQ, OIL,etc...

It's extremely unlikely that SEC bans trading for personal accounts.  However, SEC must have banned Armstrong from acting as a formal investment advisor, or taking any role in some hedge fund.

If Barclay Leib validates Armstrong's previous work, but claims work after jail is garbage, then he will be the ONE who can continue the "excellent" work after Armstrong gets out.  He could become Armstrong #2.  That is just one of the many hypothesis.