Armstrong Economics - The Scam Business Model Exposé

Let me describe in a few paragraphs how Martin Armstrong and Armstrong Economics operate.

Martin Armstrong is a forecaster and Armstrong Economics is a forecasting business that sells products and services with claims they are based on his proprietary forecasts.

Martin Armstrong claims that his forecasts are based on his Socrates forecasting engine, a patchwork of Technical Analysis Signals and his Economic Confidence Model (ECM).

He markets most of his services (Socrates online subscriptions) and products (Books and Reports and conferences, physical and virtual) with daily repeated claims that the performance of these products and services are based on his forecasting engine.

Most importantly, he claims that his forecasting engine is infallible (never fails).

This high level strategy would be sufficient in itself to sustain a business if his claims were actually true. No marketing would be required for a successful business - in fact Martin Armstrong would become a billionaire if he just used his own products and services - because he claims that they are generating trading profits.

As shown in detail on this web site, his forecasting engine as described above is completely broken and under-performing. This consequently results in a high attrition rate of his clients due to extreme user dissatisfaction. In fact the performance of his service is so bad that most likely, Martin Armstrong traded against his clients. For details, see: Socrates The Market Manipulator.

Consequently, the severe deficiencies must be glossed over in such a way that new clients get the illusion of a system that performs as claimed, and any information from dissatisfied clients or any information contradicting Martin Armstrong's narrative must be suppressed successfully.

General marketing Strategy

Before I get into the details of his marketing strategy elements later, I outline it here first to create the big picture. Martin Armstrong publishes a large volume of internet pages and messages daily as Clickbait. On the surface, the subjects of most of these articles are unrelated to his products and services. Their purpose is to create web traffic in his online store where he sells his products and services. He even succeeds in getting readers to redistribute those marketing blog pages as clickbait content because it is tailored to tell his readers what they want to hear (politically biased, sensational, controversial material). More recently, many messages have an element of easily consumable political activism that motivates redistribution.

He is mainly targeting groups of people who have little confidence in today's institutions. He often gains the trust of these people simply because he is against their enemies.

Some of these followers then become victims of any of his multiple scams. It's a terrifying business.

Self-incrimination

Martin Armstrong has recently fully exposed the criminal nature and intent of his business, which is documented in a public forum here. Putting this information up front may make it easier to understand his methods that I explain in more details later. I am quoting Martin Armstrong who is responding to one of my messages as follows:

I have hundreds of people working for me creating YouTube accounts and other social media accounts posting positive reviews and feedback. I STILL GET fresh victims daily
...
Maybe you should come work for me? We could really use you around here. We have many aspects to our Ponzi scheme and you will be first in line and be a part of our inner circle purely based on the influence you have online and the threat you present against my business. We always pay our people the best and keep paying them for life just so they don't talk too much and God forbid tell the authorities...
MA

And finally after his failure to recruit me, he issues a death threat against me as follows:

I want you DEAD! I will find out where you live trust me. I will put a contract out on your life, you don't know who you fucking with.

The statements above are very consistent with the following analysis. See also: Martin Armstrong The Hyper Fool

Quick Reality Check

Before I present his methods in exhaustive detail, I invite you to test Armstrong's credibility yourself with two examples provided in hyperlinks (I have dozens of others):


Extreme Confidence Tricks: The Fairy Tales

Martin Armstrong makes fraudulent claims about the nature, size and performance of his business to an extreme extent. In some cases, he manufactures fake evidence to back up his claims on his own web site. He also prompts his affiliates and shills to repeat these false claims as if they were firmly established. I have created separate pages for each of these claims. Here is a list of some of them:

History and Pseudo Science Pomp

On his blog site, he publishes hundreds of pages of  history and pseudo science material and repeats it regardless of context. It's a trick that creates that false image of a guru and attracts unsophisticated newcomers. The material is often worthless and misleading. Example: Historical Tweaking: The Sea People Invasions

Forecast Manipulation

Since most of Martin Armstrong's forecasts fail, he developed many methods of misrepresentation that turn failure into success as follows:

Manipulation of Past Performance and Criminal Conviction

It is no secret that Martin Armstrong used his forecasting engine Socrates to trade the markets with money stolen from clients and failed. He failed so badly that he covered his USD 700 million trading losses with a USD 3 billion Ponzi scheme that earned him 11 years jail time. See also: Cassandra Does Tokyo: The Enigma of Martin Armstrong

Most convicted felons still think they are innocent and he is no exception. To make his point, he created a conspiracy theory, shown in the disinformation infomercial "The Forecaster" which is even available for sale at Amazon. and on his own online shopping site. After the movie received bad reviews, Armstrong claimed it was banned to make it more interesting. Still, this disinformation campaign is perhaps one of his greatest success stories. Martin Armstrong openly brags about it so all I need to do is to quote him:

Danger of Conspiracy Theories

If you want to hide something in plain view, exaggerate it to the point it becomes extreme and convert it to a conspiracy theory. This is a very standard in how to create propaganda and if you keep saying a lie, its becomes the truth to many without ever having to prove anything. To uncover the truth, takes digging. This I have discovered both in politics as well as market fundamentals.
He is basically eating his own dog food. He manufactures a conspiracy theory that turns his criminal conviction on its head. He claims that he is actually the victim of a crime. In fact he is so convinced of the effectiveness of his conspiracy theory that he has the audacity to re-enact his crime in plain view.

Fake User Testimonials

Since authentic user testimonials are exclusively negative due to bad product performance,  Martin Armstrong manufactures positive feedback using various means:

This includes the deletion of negative feedback where Martin Armstrong or his associate shill (such as an interviewer or host) is in control of the published content (echo chamber).

Fake User Forums

Martin Armstrong has for years controlled more than three user forums and discussion groups that are marked as non-affiliated fan clubs. They are usually controlled by himself or by a number of paid shills. Additionally, he uses multiple fake accounts to pose as satisfied users in these forums. For example, see:

The Facebook Martin Armstrong and Socrates Traders Group and the retired The reddit Armstrong Economics Fan Forum

Gaslighting

When clients complain about losing trades due to bad Socrates trading signals, then Martin Armstrong and his shills execute a strict and brutal protocol. They manufacture in hindsight an alternative trading signal, based on the ambiguity of the system and stipulate that this signal should have been traded instead - distracting from system failure and blaming the client. They use even the most far-fetched and obscure undocumented trading rules, which, had they been executed, would have produced a gain. They then accuse the client of being an incompetent loser, preferably in a public setting. He exploits the simple well-known fact that losers are less likely to spread the message about their losses because it would expose themselves as being fools who should not have taken the risk of trading based on such a system. If the client / victim / opponent still disagrees and cannot be silenced, then he issues threats such as a death threat.

Delay Tactics and Upselling

Socrates trading signals are equally ineffective in the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly time frames.

However when new subscribers start getting frustrated by the failures in the shorter term such as daily signals, they are getting fed with promises that the signals in the longer time frames are more reliable and that the more expensive Pro Level of the Socrates software will help them make better trading decisions. This keeps clients on the hook longer because they must wait longer for trading results. Additionally, he sells online training courses for the Socrates trading system. This ensures that clients get locked in as long as possible while they are already suffering from the inevitable trading losses.

Socrates Bait-and-Switch

As described in the page linked above, Martin Armstrong makes a completely bogus distinction between forecasts that he published and those that Socrates made in its computer output. He conveniently hides that both his published forecasts AND the computer output are equally ambiguous, and that that he uses his Socrates himself because he does not have any other analysis methods. With this tactic he creates an additional level of smoke and mirrors and glosses over any failure while focusing on the important goal: Sell services and products.

Martin Armstrong the Altruist, the Savior of Humanity

He uses this trick to make spending money on his products easy. In Martin Armstrong The Humanist Impostor I show where he uses this sales trick that lets his clients feel good spending money on snake oil without even thinking about it.

Rewarding Loyal Clients with Words of Praise 

He uses this trick to make his clients feel special.

It is more than obvious from the title in this rather awkward article in which he delivers the message using his Fake Client Email Confidence Trick:

 
Chances Are you Are A Genius if you Read this Blog – It’s All in the Methodology

... Is there some distinction between this parallel between you and Einstein seeing what others do not? ...

The above mentioned tricks are still not sufficient to create a large number of clients for his products matching his forecasting and trading themes. He needs a larger audience. For the details on how he achieves that, see:

Content Aggregation and Clickbait in Martin Armstrong's Populist Hot-Button Topic Campaign

However, this is still not enough. The following section reveals the tricks that Martin Armstrong uses to generate the web site traffic on his site that finally achieves his objective: Getting your money!

Affiliate Sites and Channels (Armstrong Promoters and Facilitators)

The following sites and channels promote the content of his blog and his products by copying his blog content, linking to it, reporting on it and hosting interview videos. A Link Farm is a special case where the site driven by a robot is a kind of a mirror image of Armstrong's site with the purpose of tricking search engines to artificially improve his search engine ranking (an extreme case was FINAGG.COM which exclusively mirrored Armstrong's entire blog site).

The Compounding Effect of the Disinformation Bubble

The members in the list above are interwoven in a complex but obvious way that enhances their effect but it seems to be unstable nevertheless. For the details, see: The Hyperspace Attention Seeker

Campaign Structure and Operations

The model is still not complete without this component that jump starts it into operation. A miniature version of the campaign structure is often visible in a single page on his blog site. It starts with a fake user question and ends with a link to a product in his online store.

The campaign's scope is wider - its purpose is to create a new theme that can be exploited with many subsequent blog pages. Let me describe it by means of an example, the Covid-19 Coronavirus campaign, how it is orchestrated (see Martin Armstrong's Populist Hot-Button Topic Campaign.for some more details).

He first selects a popular theme that resonates with his target audience and collects some conspiracy type of information. He then creates some hype such as an online petition and a letter to the US president. Then he creates some products from it, in this case an electronic book and a US$300 virtual conference as described here.

Then he arranges an interview with one of his top affiliates Greg Hunter at USAWatchdog.com who helps him sell his books: Martin Armstrong – President Has Power to Reopen Country.

After completion of this video, he advertises the entire theme at Zero Hedge (viewing of this requires Zero Hedge Premium membership because it is already archived). 

This clearly puts Zero Hedge into a different league as being the site with the highest web traffic of any of his active affiliated sites that would still be prepared to promote him. Read more about this at The Martin Armstrong Scam on Zero Hedge.

Only then, after some delay, he again features the interview on his own blog site. After this cycle is complete, an interview video may have been viewed up to a few hundred thousand times.

Conclusion

Martin Armstrong has created a perfect business model for selling broken products and services as proven on this site numerous times. He uses fraudulent misrepresentation of performance, devious tricks and an elaborate network of shills, echo chambers and affiliates to let his marketing messages reverberate through hyperspace, all generated from his one man business operating from his home. His business is clearly predatory.

If you still do not believe me that every word I wrote is true, see the proof in my Legal Disclaimer


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