Topic: Martin Armstrong Discussion - page 297. (Read 647196 times)

I realise I may have been unwittingly pedantic in reading your text 


Even though you now feel it is less likely you have MS, and it might not be appropriate regarding your particular situation, I was wondering if you had across this news regarding a promising breakthrough:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35065905

"...UK doctors in Sheffield say patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) are showing "remarkable" improvements after receiving a treatment usually used for cancer.

About 20 patients have received bone marrow transplants using their own stem cells..."


Thanks for the clarification.


Interesting. A couple of the above coincide with my own various "hedges" against the uncertainty ahead - and I recently abandoned plans of returning to any kind of crypto for the time being. Having an offshore account too was another consideration (for a comparitively modest sum), though can't really be sure which countries would be stable (I recall earlier discussion on this in another thread); having looked into the supposedly purged Iceland, but can't be certain that is the case. Fortunately, I can get hold of physical gold coins easily here, but would be watching for government intervention like a hawk during any subsequent rise, ready to get out quick and perhaps buy land with the proceeds (while remaining aware of the possible pitfalls), if crypto still appears uncertain.

But hey, I'm not looking for a response to this, realising you have other fish to fry at the moment. Just ruminating aloud, so to speak. But a time for decisive action is at hand, I think. One shot now could set off an avalanche.

My writing is very sloppy and missing words (that I hear in my head but forget to type), because I am far too overloaded due to the rate of posting and number of waking versus sleeping hours, in addition to all the other work and tasks I am attempting to do. You all simply can't expect one man to be superman. Impossible. Even the coherence of my writing and thoughts declines as the load increases. It is a documented fact that brain damage results from these sort of patterns of activity (lack of sleep, etc). Especially not good for age 50.7 and trying to cure come chronic dysfunction of the bile duct that has systemic effects in terms of chronic fatigue syndrome, peripheral neuropathy, headaches, whole body itchiness (to the point of having wounds all over my body when I scratch while sleeping) and other symptoms which mimic Multiple Sclerosis (but I now envision I don't have MS but rather the yellow stomach is more likely pancreatic or gall bladder issue, maybe cancer or blockage for other reason).

I consistently stated that I thought the capitulation low would be < $150, perhaps < $100. Last May I predicted the rise to $320 exactly and expected it could begin the decline to the expected bottom. You can find the discussion mostly in kLee's PnF thread in Speculation forum. You find there my exact prediction stating that it could rise back up to maximum of $450 (or maybe I said $400 to $500 range) before making the decline to $150. I also stated that I would be stopped out at $380 if that scenario played out and had I been short (but later I realized had I been short from $320, I would have closed my shorts in the mid-$200s as it was meandering there). The $400 - $500 level was based on some chart analysis and the details are in that PnF thread. Around August or so with the approachin 2015.75, I was on the lookout as to whether the decline to the bottom would come precipitously. But then someone shared with me a copy of Armstrong's gold report and I became  aware that the predicted low was roughly March 2016. So then I began to expect the final capitulation low would come Q1 2016. I stated this publicly. I also had more confirmation that Bitcoin was going to rise again when it meandered in the mid-$200s.

As for a double-bottom or whether the bottom with be V shaped or U shaped, I don't have any ideas other than I expect the crash of Bitcoin is going to be due to fundamentals such as the realization that the Chinese miners control Bitcoin. And thus I don't expect any quick rise back up.

Actually it is very difficult now to analyze the future of crypto. I just know I see an incredible opportunity for me given I have a design which solves these technical problems, so I need to busy coding and not posting about these matters.

Another perspective could be that Bitcoin will be centralized and the block chain size increased and that we've already seen the bottom at the V bottom dip to $150 before.

Let’s take a look at this picture again http://s3.amazonaws.com/armstrongeconomics-wp/2012/08/realestate-cycle.jpg Since 1955, from which the graph begins, to 1979, when it was first created (claimed to be created, to be precise), there must have been some metric MA used to measure real estate dynamics, right? And it wasn’t the S&P Reit index, because there was no S&P Reit index back then, ok? So you can’t use it or any other metric that was developed later to argue that the forecast is correct. But even the S&P Reit says that real estate exceeded 2007 high. Regardless of anything, again, check what’s going on in all major cities across the globe and every dog on the street will tell you that real estate is way higher than it was in 2007.

As for 1987, 1989 and other ecm predictions http://www.financialsense.com/sites/default/files/users/u695/armstrong-economic-confidence-model.jpg, let’s not fall for that bs, ok? He did not predict any of those events. He just stated those dates based on 8.6 years without any specifics. And if something did happen on or around those dates he came out and claimed that he predicted precisely that event. For example, MA did not predict the crash of 1987. The Dow bottomed on Oct20 which is accidently happened on 1987.8. The decline itself started earlier on Aug25. And only after the crash MA jumped in and claimed his “forecast”. Another interesting thing is that his model shows that it should have been the peak, not the bottom.

Further to that, here http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/models/historical-turning-points-economic-confidence-model-6000bc-2072ad he put thousands of points so naturally something happened on or around some dates. But it clear that in absolute majority of cases nothing happened at all, just like in 2015.75, which MA had been preaching for years as Big Bang. But let me remind you, he predicted  http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/35652 the US government shutdown, government debt collapse and so much else. Of course, nothing of that happened. In fact, nothing happened at all. So in the absence of anything significant, he, in order to cover his ass, used the fact that Putin sent a couple of planes to Syria as the major Big Bang event. What a pathetic charlatan!

Also, MA says that every 51-year wave is followed by deflation http://img.over-blog-kiwi.com/0/55/64/39/201306/phpukRPHF, i.e. after 1929, 1981, 2033, etc. The reality is that deflation started after 1921, briefly paused and then restarted after 1926. There was no deflation after 1981 - there was high inflation instead. And now we are almost in a deflation mode but his deeply flawed model says we should get deflation no earlier than 2033. And if we go back earlier than 1929 we’ll easily find even more flaws in all his bs theory.

And just for those who are still delusional and cannot figure out what is what by themselves, check http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/17/business/international-business-japanese-regulators-get-a-2d-scalp-under-their-belts.html  what NYT had to say about MA back then. “a show-boating investment manager who was well known among Japanese corporate investors for his persuasive sales pitches.” Notice, they don’t call him a great programmer, forecaster, guru, economist, financier, trader, hedge fund manager, historian, scientist or anything else but a show-boating salesman. Because that’s what he was and has always been ever since the times he could not get into college. A salesman that pitches bs, for you can't teach an old dog new tricks. And every sensible man now knows it.

Fair enough.. In trading even a 1% edge is very valuable 51/50 can make you a millionaire in a year

yes, nice post. food for thought.

no one will ever be 100% correct, especially across every asset class, which seems to be the standard he is judged against. But MA has at least a track record of making some big correct calls (87, 89, 98). These aren't in dispute.

His REI call was also correct - that day (Feb 9 2007) was the S&P REIT high and it wasnt until Jan 2015 that it was equalled (NOT adjusted for inflation). Has gone back down since then. MA's model predicted an upswing from 20011 till 2015.75 in the RE model and that has been accurate, but what is unavoidable is that house prices in many big cities have blown through 2008 levels: London, Manhattan, Vancouver, Sydney etc. Taking his graph literally, 2015 wasn't supposed to eclipse 2007 and in regards to the S&P REIT it didn't, but prices sure have in those places (and they have also come down slightly since then - London, Manhattan, Canada, Australia).

I think there is something to MA's modelling. The overall trend seems to be near enough on point, and I read many prominent people in economics etc having similar opinions on many calls over the last year or so (eg USD, sovereign debt). If MA has been showing this trend coming for 20 years (assuming his copyright on models is as stated), thats worthy of some interest.

I also vaguely remember seeing MA admit to a wrong call on a video somewhere. iirc he was talking about a low in Japan in 1994 but was saying that the actions of the government delayed / manipulated it. cant remember where I saw it.

anyone with common sense can see whats happening it doesnt take armstrong for that

That's pretty much my view as well.  NO ONE bats 1.000, no one gets future predictions even 90% correctly.  Predicting the future is very hard, especially in with complex systems like the economy and finance.

Longer term trends are sometimes easier to predict because there are some critical factors that sometimes can be identified that many miss...

Armstrong's great value to me are his ideas!  Same with "our" TPTB.  Whether specific short-term predictions come true a high-percentage of the time is not important.  Longer term is what IS important.

Stop this absurdity please. He did have predicted nothing else but wrong figures and trends.

I am the most vocal cheerleader of the TPTB_need_war fanboy club, he is the best in the BCT forum on information technology related topics, he is an exceptionally smart and knowledgeable man, but his Bitcoin price prediction is a complete nonsense. I point it out why and you could read it at


but shortly, he has predicted the top cannot exceed $325, and then it must and will crash to $150 or even double digits. Instead of crashing to double digits the BTC market has been trading 30%-50% above his ceiling for a while. I am not sure why he started to spread his BS of "as I predicted the BTC price of $150 for this spring", because everyone can read what he has predicted. As I said above, if you would follow his advice and short from $325 then you would have to sell your house, wife and children by now to cover your losses (except if you put stop loss on your short of course).

As for Armstrong, I am the most vocal cheerleader of the Armstrong's fanboy club as well, and I have nothing but respect with regards to his analytical skill that puts current market events in historical context and that - in my opinion - allows him to draw logical conclusions about long market trends, plus it was quite impressive how he could predict the Russian crisis in 1997-98 by analysing the global capital flow, but I have to admit sloanf has made several valid points about Armstrong.
The bottom line is: nobody can predict the next day, but not even the next week market. Even sensible individuals like Caldaro or Avi Gilburt predict completely wrong short and medium term market prices. (right now Caldaro says that he has never seen such market reaction, it is very unusual how the market behaves that's why he couldn't predict the current dip .. . no shit ..  the market behave unpredictably).

It seems Armstrong's long term prediction about the capital inflow to the US equity market makes lots of sense and it seems logical, but he is unable to predict short term trends, and to be fair he is not even trying to do it lately. His most useful short term market tip was when he said 3 months ago that the volatility will be too high and  it is not possible to trade on this market. Many of us translated this to a long straddle trade and it was a profitable strategy, but to be fair to Armstrong's critics, after the August lows and during the earning seasons combined with the FED rate raise the volatility was not a surprise, so by stating that the market will be volatile Armstrong was stating the obvious.

What? His computer can't predict the future? You don't say.

Well done! Nice post

+1 nice post, full of actual facts.. Seems to validate my take on him aswell. Rei is def way higher here, and i know inflation didnt rise that much to offset the boom around the states, so 2007 wasnt the peak.

This goes back to 2008 http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/its-just-time-martin-armstrong.pdf when he predicted 2500 and 5000 in gold. Notice also his “brilliant and super precise” forecast on the Dow ranging between 3.5-35K.

Now take a look at this http://s3.amazonaws.com/armstrongeconomics-wp/2012/03/will-gold-reach-5000-809.pdf.  He finally gets more specific by saying gold “is still poised to rally to at least test the $3,000 level if not much higher.” At least! And of course he yet again mentions 5000 levels. Of course, as we now know, it was yet another totally wrong prediction.

Here (in 2011) http://s3.amazonaws.com/armstrongeconomics-wp/2011/03/armstrongeconomics-how-when-030111.pdf he praises gold as THE BEST of all worlds for a bull market and even goes as far as to predict 12K (not just 5K this time!) by 2015\2016.

And now when it became bloody obvious for everybody that gold is not going to 5K by 2015\2016, he flip-flopped and now all of a sudden sells the opposite bs to the same gullible idiots that gold is going below 1K. But even after that flip-flopping, he still gets it all wrong all the time. How many times he predicted gold to break 1K by a certain date? Of course, it never happened.

By the way, whilst we are at gold, let’s examine yet another of his numerous bs. MA in almost every post about gold keep babbling “Gold is not the hedge against "inflation" but against the "collapse in the confidence of government." In other words, when people lose confidence in government they buy gold, and when government is strong - gold is low. Oh really?  Absolute high (inflation adj) in gold was in 1980 when the US has the lowest level of Debt\GDP since the Great Depression with gov. debt is around 1 trln, which is a joke in comparison with what we have now (19 trnl, > 100% Debt\GDP). And yet now we have gold around 1100 which is far less than the peak of 2011 which (inflation adj.) in turn is less than the peak of 1980. So what MA tells you is that the credibility of\confidence in the US government and all other governments was lower in 1980 than it is now. What a clown!


Look at this http://s3.amazonaws.com/armstrongeconomics-wp/2012/08/realestate-cycle.jpg and stop bullshitting people (after all, we have MA for that), ok? It shows the peak at 2007.15 and then a decline to 2033. And the reality is real estate now is way higher than 2007 levels almost everywhere. Look at what is going on in San Francisco, LA, New York, London, Hong Kong, etc. And it’s not just the top segment that is rising. Look at Sweden, for example, and many other places.


He likes to constantly bs people about how everything is connected, all asset prices are interlinked, etc. If that’s the case, then you can’t simply miss such a big move in oil price. Especially if you do have a computer model (as he claims) that tracks everything for you. Yet he missed it completely. He never warned about upcoming collapse. If fact, he predicted the opposite, right at the YTD peak http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/22328 (“It is poised to rally into 2017 and it appears this is lining up with our war models”). Wars are all over the place yet oil went down sharply. Even when the price declined substantially, he kept ignoring it. He only start mentioning oil when it came to 70. And how about Swiss Franc? This http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/25888 should end with the myth that he predicted the CHF-peg break.

Finally, let me add to the summary I have made in the previous post about his cheats and tricks. Throughout all these years he uses the same pattern of predictions:
1.   Pick an asset
2.   Multiply its price by 8-10
3.   Pick a date which is next or second-next in his deeply flawed 3.14 model

Examples abound: Oil $10 to 100 (10 times) by the next 3.14 date 2007.15, the Dow 3.5K to 35K (10 times) by next 3.14 date 2015.75, gold 500 or 1200 to 5000 or 12000 (by 10 times) by the next 3.14 date 2015.75, etc. If it does not work, he just shifts the date (which he did twice already with the Dow) or flip flops (like he did with gold or with oil ). Simple.

So it is clear that there is no computer model, it’s all just his opinions and wild guesses. And to look more credible and differentiate himself from other so called gurus to justify outrageous prices he charges for bs dvds, reports, subscriptions, conferences, etc, he brings up all that bs about history of Rome and physics.

Further to the above, you might want to check this http://www.informedtrades.com/showthread.php?t=1341538 to see that thanks god not all people are so delusional like yourself.

In the interest of balance, I thought I'd mention this item from MA's blog on January 8th, 2016:

"Britain Hit with Coldest Winter in 58 Years"
http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/41587

"When I lived in London back in the 1980s, there was a touch of snow and everyone was running around photographing the snowfall in the city. Now, Britain is getting hit with their coldest winter in 58 YEARS. London was hit with its first snowfall in November. Now in January, it is getting hit again. We have been warning the cycles are turning to global cooling — not warming. It is called a Maunder Minimum. This is the real direction we face."

Well, I've given it over a week, and we certainly haven't been experiencing anything like the above; just ordinary January weather with a touch of snow here and there, but nothing special. Currently 4C (39F) in London. He mentions the snow in November, but since then (nothing terrible) it has been very mild and unusually wet, up until very recently. EDIT: an Accuweather forecast for the rest of the month: http://www.accuweather.com/en/gb/london/ec4a-2/january-weather/328328

Not being a scientist, and hearing compelling arguments from both the "for" and "against" camps regarding antrhopogenic climate change (and now the apparently imminent mini ice-age), I am unable to form a lasting opinion - and I've attemted to examine the subject as objectively as I'm able for near enough 20 years.

EDIT:


You mention "...a gold low.." So, in your judgement, and while aknowledging the uncertainty, do you imagine a single low / bottom by end of Q1 2016, or double low / bottom by end of 2017?

It is difficult to access how the 51% attack the Chinese miners did on Bitcoin is going to play out.

Btw, to follow my logic, then follow my posts in the Altcoin Discussion forum.

Any one interested in analyzing Ethereum, then start here:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.13583753
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.13577121

I believe Armstrong's timing for a gold low is roughly March, if that has not changed since his earlier gold reports. We will have to see if Bitcoin follows gold down in a liquidity crisis event or not. Right now everything sure seems to be quiet in the global markets, but maybe the quiet precedes the storm.

So yes Armstrong could end up being wrong about gold and I could even be further wrong about Bitcoin following gold down. So shorting is risky.

Note I have revealed that the Chinese miners are lying. See the discussion between smooth and myself. As this revelation spreads out, what happens if the Chinese miners are caught in a huge corruption and decide to liquidate their mining equipment? Or some other rash action in our community.

It is really difficult to access how this clusterfuck of block scaling economics is going to play out for Bitcoin. I haven't expended enough time doing the 3D chess analysis on it.

+1

Anyone already shorting bitcoin in prevision of the spring low that anonymint predicted?

How so?

That is nearly always the case when it is not a Waterfall crash but rather just clearing out the incorrect timing speculation.

Gold and Bitcoin are not waterfall crashing due to some nosebleed insolvency (as will happen to Europe's banks for example). They are correcting. Note Bitcoin may be on its death bed though given it has now been 51% attacked by Chinese miners.