Revision Signals

Socrates generates signals labeled "Reversal" in hindsight.

In the scope of these critical writings, I call trading signals generated in hindsight "Revision Signals", because Martin Armstrong uses these special signals exclusively to create a revision of the truth, by re-writing the history of a situation that has already occurred. I also use the term here to avoid confusion with the term "Reversal", the term that Martin Armstrong uses for Revision Signals nevertheless. To make it clear from the start, these signals are fraudulent.

What a Reversal normally is, is defined in Martin Armstrong's documentation. Please see the links at the end of this page.

In short, it is a price value, that if the market crosses it, acts as a buy or sell signal. Sets of four Reversal values are generated at market highs and lows for future use. Therefore, these Reversals are planned, and I am using the term "planned Reversal" at times to make this distinction between them and Revision Signals.

Socrates generates Revision Signals in various scenarios, e.g. where a planned Reversal was elected and has already failed, meaning the market price after its election has moved in the opposite direction, and would have already created a trading loss if traded. There are multiple different scenarios.

In one scenario, it creates a signal called Superposition Event which is of the opposite direction of the failed Reversal.

In a different, more frequent scenario, Reversals are replaced by new ones in the next session while the old reversals are conveniently forgotten. This is a feature at the core of the trial and error nature of Reversal System. Read more at:

The Reversal System - Engineering Perspective


Unfortunately, some of these Revision Signals are also labeled "Reversal" in the Socrates reports, and Socrates uses (counts) them in the reports to enhance the track record of the system. As if they had been generated as planned Reversals which is not true.

A rather critical problem with Revision Signals is that the time that passes after planned Reversal failure until a Revision Signal is generated varies. This has the effect that a Revision Signal may lose whatever utility it may have had to exit a losing trade, losing due to Reversal failure, because it is too late.

Since Revision Signals are created in multiple different scenarios, these scenarios are documented in detail on separate pages.

However, an important feature of a Revision Signal is that it is fraudulent because it tricks the user or the person analyzing the system into believing that the system predicted a price movement where in fact the signal was generated after the price movement had already occurred. This confidence trick is facilitated by the practice of using the same term "Reversal" for entirely different things, creating confusion.

This confusion has lead to situations where Martin Armstrong's affiliates encouraged users to upgrade their Socrates subscription to the most expensive "Pro" level to view more detail about the reversals, and / or learn more about the system using Forecast Arrays, rather than admitting that the signals were generated in hindsight.

Unfortunately, the Socrates system prints other irrelevant "unconfirmed" or "what-if" reversal values that change going forward in time before becoming "confirmed" and fixed. I am not referring to these. Armstrong promoters / shills often use these unconfirmed reversals as a distraction by showing  that reversals are allowed to change over time.



How to Use the Reversal System

It is clear from the following statement in the instructions linked to above that Reversals must be created in advance:

"If you are actively trading a particular market, we suggest that you write down the Reversals ... from our reports in a vertical format."

Socrates misrepresents the occurrence of Reversals in computer reports.

His computer generates reports every day. These reports should be saved to create a record of past performance and to discuss issues such as the following. Here is an extract from one of the daily reports:

The current overall tone on the Daily level is reasonably Bullish for right now, electing three Daily Bullish Reversals suggesting a moderate move up on this time level with the last being elected yesterday suggesting at least a bounce.

This reporting is selective and therefore revisionist. It creates the illusion that one only needs to trade the Reversals to trade profitably. Because it never reports situations where reversals were elected but the market price moved in the opposite direction which happens more often than not. This trick of selective biased reporting is actively exploited in Martin Armstrong's official support forum, for example here:

Nasdaq Composite. Weekly Super-Position event (bearish).

Disagree, watch the reversals on the 1h chart and you’ll be amazed

The shill responds to critical comments that were - again - selectively deleted ("Comment removed by moderator"), in Martin Armstrong's true dictatorial revisionist style. Please note that even the title of the post indicates a Socrates failure, hence the need for a revisionist "Super-Position event" which is only generated after another Reversal failure.

Socrates emits signals called "Cycle Inversion" in hindsight.

These hindsight signals appear in the context of Forecast Arrays after the fact, when on a previously predicted turning point time target, the price curve dues not actually turn but continues to follow the current trend. In other words the turning point failed. A cycle inversion signal is never generated ahead of time, only after the fact. The effect is not even included in the user manual. Following is the relevant section from a printed Detailed Analysis report:

The last cyclical event was a low established back during May. Normally, this implies that the next turning point should be a reaction high. However, thus far, this market has already broken that previous low established at 126730. This strongly implies we are in a cycle inversion process, which tends to be rather bearish overall.

The signal is emitted clearly after the fact - an excuse for the failure of the turning point.

Examples of Revision Signals:

Quarterly Superposition Event in Gold 2015
Weekly Superposition Event in the DOW October 2018