Topic: Martin Armstrong Discussion - page 126. (Read 647176 times)

Socrates has been available for many that have attended his WECs over the years. I know of an individual that has been receiving socrates reports since the time they were being faxed out decades ago

Barclay Leib does appear in his documentary 'The Forecaster': view here on Youtube (in German):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLCkRxrfo10

at 44mins -  Leib alludes to the fact that he is not sure the story about Safra is real;'.. it could or could not be true..?'
at 1hr20mins - Leib confirms that on 24 Feb 2007 (remember Armstrong is in jail since 1999) - he shorts the market based on the Arrays - a Pi day - and lo and behold world markets tank, based on no news.. it made the '..hairs on the back of my neck stand on end..'

Johnyii.com .this subscription will give you good trading advice .I been reading his newsletter for sometime. He is good .

I am still in the testing and analyzing phase of Socrates Pro. I do have money to work in the markets, but not related to any calls by Armstrong. I admit I lost money on a gold trade when he stated gold would go under $1000 at the end of 2016. I was shorting gold only to have it reverse on me very quickly. Weeks later, MA stated, see our levels held! And, I was like...wait a minute...this was a 180 degree turn from what was being stated on his blog. I did however make money on another gold short when the 1365 level held last year, but a simple resistance line was the "call to short" for me. His number acted as confirmation when we didn't cross it to the upside.

As, I previously mentioned this is not a system that clearly indicates buy or sell. I find the arrays extremely confusing evening after reading his guide. Sometimes the arrays work and sometimes they don't. When they work to the day it has me being a believer and that there is promise, but other times they fail and a "cycle inversion" or nothing happens in either direction...and this is frustrating as the "system can never be wrong."

The arrays did not pick up on any large movement from the Dec 2018 low to present in the DOW. That was a huge move. I have spent a long time in cash as we are to test the December lows. So, I am waiting for a substantial pullback.

There is talk of version 2.0 of Socrates- what that looks like is a guess to me. I always felt that MA has access to so much more than what has been released for $150 a month to the public. As I mentioned earlier, other cyclical analysts either have cycle brackets showing movement in a predictive fashion or an actual line showing predictive movement with accuracy and backtesting is visual as it is on a chart. There is some talk about cycle inversions...or delays in cycles with others as well however.

So, a bit frustrated as I thought Socrates would be "more", but I am not giving up on it yet.

I bet the Spx will retest 2600 .
Armstrong is right in gold making Jan high .

I have recently read another very interesting book - written by a former employee of Princeton Economic Institute just before MA was thrown into jail.

It is called Not On My Grandfather's Wallstreet, though the book isn't exclusively about MA. It does have many chapters about his run ins with MA, working with him, and then meeting him soon after his release from prison.

That person (who uses a pseudonym) is Barclay Leib, who from what i can tell is a professional and successful trader, who still works in trading to this day. Meanwhile, MA appears to have no real trading history, at least since he left jail. I wonder if he was banned from trading as part of a deal to release him? That would explain the (possible) snake oil salesman selling of events and subscriptions. Nice earner for him...

Lieb is interesting in what he talks about, I will cover that below. He also talks about MA's early life where he used to work for government analysing rockets. He then moved into financial consulting having been so bored working for government, he started reading extensively into history and economic cycles. Ironic that MA explains A students work for C students, and B students work for government.

It seems he was always a B student, not least with no formal education or qualifications in either economics or trading. That I do find interesting as you would never think that. Granted pieces of paper are just that, but then by that same argument, if MA was so incredible, why hasn't he dedicated himself to his art and become a PhD at the very least? It does reduce his credibility.

In the book, MA is called "Marty Amwell" and Armstrong Economics is referred to as "Amwell Economics".

It does not paint a particularly rosy picture of MA and at the time (1999) when the sh*t was hitting the fan. Essentially, ML was using his consulting firm to buy up tobashi transactions among major Japanese companies, who were suffering serious investment/pensions losses. Referenced in the book (but not named) is Naoki Kumagai who was an MA client who he met at his Tokyo WEC event. This guy was later charged with fraud and jailed for 8 years.

The FBI investigation into MA was actually started by the Japanese financial regulators. BL asked MA before he was arrested if he had made any losses, where he was trading through (Edmond J.) Safra Bank. He told BL, something in the region of $400m had been lost.

Fast forward to MA's release from jail and he agreed to meet BL, who explained he was left "disgusted" that MA now denied he had made any losses or had even done anything wrong. MA explained it was Safra who stole the money.

BL explained that after getting out of jail, MA appeared a "complete mess" and his "sharp" mind was no more. He explains of the Armstrong Economics blog back in 2014/15 and how where before jail, MA's writings were on point, now it had turned into irreverent ramblings.

What is interesting though is BL never said the pi cycle was wrong. He actually does believe it exists, though requires further refining. He talks of double the 8.6 cycle (17 years) as major turning points, though his forecasts generally line up with what MA forecast. See some of his articles:
https://safehaven.com/article/248/measuring-financial-time-the-magic-of-pi
http://www.sandspring.com/articles/TechnicalAnalystMagazineJan2009.pdf

I still think MA may have uncovered an interesting theory on cycles that may well be true, however, since getting out of jail, I question whether:
• He still trades anymore, not least as he seems very shady about his current trading (he may well be banned)
• Socrates actually exists or is a ruse to cover up incriminating evidence that would jail him even longer re: the tobashi scam
• His state of mind having been put in solitary for 5 years and almost killed by an inmate who battered his head with his own typewriter
• His finances where, if you are entering your twilight years and need money, would the ethics of making money by lying override honesty?
• His trading prowess where it may well be likely he made wrong bets on USD/JPY and lost HUNDREDS of millions - why didn't Socrates help him avoid this?

as mentioned I can not disclose too much information obtained via subscription.

However I can tell you that I checked IBD today an the Accumulation Distribution letter for the major indices are "D+", being A the best and E the worst.
So the picture is consistent. All big indexes have the same letter. On the week of May 6th, we had "B" in SP500 and Nasdaq.

Ok finally a weekly bearish has been elected on Nasdaq. Bitcoin remained over the weekly bullish (also elected)  and below the Monthly Bullish. There are still some days till months end :-)

A bit of a distance between the weekly reversals, but my other TA shows a downward view

It seems to me that the 'trade of the century' will be to buy both stock market and gold near the next 2020 January turning point... maybe that is the slingshot date low.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/trumps-china-tweet/

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/capital-flows-currency-flows/
'..The capital flows you can obtain from OECD. You have to take the Capital Account and Current Account. We get the raw data that is faster. The Capital Account reflects capital inflows typically for investment, stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. The Current Account reflects the erroneously referred to trade numbers for it also includes outflows of interest and dividends...
Currency Flows are a more immediate indicator and the price reflects the flows and we can detect volume. Thus, a rising dollar and a declining euro will reflect the currency flows instantly and be confirmed by the Capital Flows as the data comes in.
This is how we were able to state publicly in 1998 that we saw $100 billion going into to Russia and $150 billion leaving. Hence, we warned Russia would collapse and that became the Long-Term Capital Management debacle.....
Keep in mind that many central banks gave us access to raw data so they too could see the world faster. Correlation studies show that the rise and fall of currencies reflect the final numbers of Capital Flows...'

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/capital-flow/capital-flow-movements/
'..Here is our capital flow map, which is proprietary. Even central banks are using this. We are collecting the raw data globally and will be providing a breakdown in the future of volume and sector analysis we pick up in the flows..'

That number was mentioned as weekly. There's plenty of time tomorrow to go both ways.

DOW: Interesting close

Great!

I think the issue with the methodology you are proposing to study the quality of MA´s system suffers from the fact, that the results are influenced by the trading skills of individuals. So at the end you will still not now if the results are due to Socrates or do the superb  trading skills. Everyday in the markets there are plenty of winners that are using their own systems. Does technical analysis work ? Sure! but there are a lot of traders loosing money with that system. Is that a fault of technical analysis ?

The accuracy of Socrates can be only tested against the predictions the system is generating and not for specifics trades that are on the responsibility of individuals.  It predicted a high in Nasdaq in May. We have a high in May so far. Bitcoin reversals predicted an uptrend in Bitcoin: we are having a bitcoin uptrend.   No weekly bearish reversals have been elected so far. And the next high / low is supposed to be in June. We will see.

Between May first and today the system did not predict any specific weekly direction for Nasdaq as no weekly reversals have been elected (also not any monthly, daily I am not following). This is exactly what is happening now. If reversals are elected tomorrow , I will post it here and then we can see the results one week after (where we should consider that reversals act similar  as support / resistance levels) So far, I can not complain in any aspect about the prediction of the system as long as I am following it.



 

Waiting to see the real direction according to the weekly bearish  for Nasdaq avoided negative suprises :-). The market crossed the bearish reversal upwards and is touching even the bullish one. Lets see what the system states tomorrow for closing. It looks like a slingshot.

DOW: We broke up...out of the channel posted above. However, Armstrong talks about failure to get above 25,900 to 26,000 will indicate weakness until July. Todays close and tomorrow seems very important.

Turned out to be a high. These thing, obviously, happen. How to recognize that? I mean, is it possible to recognize that in advance, by looking at the higher time frame?

psp777 and others, are there other cyclical analysts you recommend/respect?

Can you name names?

I think there should be arrows on a chart for buy and sell signals. Other cyclical analysts actually have line graphs projecting price movement in advance with very good accuracy.
Looks like SPX just dipped back into its channel on the charts

Another very funny thing: Armstrong keeps on saying how foreigners are endlessly binch buying US equities, and that keeps the Dow up. Why the hell do the numbers say something totally different??  




Someone please explain Armstrong's "logic"...