Martin Armstrong's Socrates: The Insider Market Manipulation Machine

MUST READ 

Introduction: The Big Elephant in the Room 

Everybody who is financially active is potentially manipulating some markets because of their own statements that are promoting some product or service. As I have shown on this site many times, Martin Armstrong is no exception, at least regarding the promotion of his own products and services.

However, the big elephant in the room is his Socrates service. Please let me explain how Socrates is the ideal tool for AUTOMATED - and occasional manual - market manipulation.

Every user of the Socrates system who wants to trade based on it, must download the corresponding market data for each trading instrument from Armstrong's server. Even more so, that user must subscribe to that instrument for the technical trading information that is being paid for. 

The Socrates Tiered Trap: Forced Disclosure of Exact Trading Intentions

• Basic ($15/month): Bundles 25 summary-level markets but lacks any trading tools like reversals or forecast arrays—Armstrong himself admits this isn't suitable for trading, making it a "teaser" that hooks users without value.
• Plus ($55/month): More markets bundled, but still no advanced tools; it's a midpoint that builds dependency.
• Pro ($150/month): The only tier with essential trading features (Reversal System and Forecast Arrays), but it bundles just one premium instrument. Users must pay extra (often $25–$50/month per additional market) for more, forcing deliberate, logged choices that signal exact intents (e.g., adding a low-volume silver mining stock right before a signal). 

This forced disclosure creates a goldmine of insider information—far more precise than aggregate sentiment.

Kickstarting the Machine: Narrative Seeding via Blogs and Amplifiers

While Socrates' architecture enables the core exploitation, the real "hum" comes from Armstrong's proactive narrative seeding through his blogs and external mouthpieces. This isn't separate—it's the ignition that drives users into the disclosure trap.

 

Armstrong's public blog (armstrongeconomics.com) broadcasts broad predictions laced with market implications, like impending war cycles or gold surges amid geopolitical chaos. Recent posts warn of a "Panic Cycle in 2026" or "World War III Unfolding," stirring sentiment in low-volume markets. The private blog (subscriber-only) adds exclusive nudges, priming users to act.

 

Amplifiers supercharge this: YouTube, Ruble, Zero Hedge frequently features Armstrong's doomsday forecasts (e.g., "Gold Signals War - Martin Armstrong Warns Of 'Panic Cycle In 2026'" or "'Plan On It!' Martin Armstrong Sees '100% Chance Of Nuclear War'"), reaching a cynical audience primed for trades. On X, shills echo "Martin Armstrong predicted [event]" with links to his content, creating viral buzz (e.g., posts hyping his Soviet Union collapse forecast to sell books/interviews).

 

This seeding sparks initial interest: Users flock to Socrates, disclosing instruments (e.g., gold amid war hype) via Pro-tier adds. Insiders monitor, issue reversals, and the self-fulfilling cycle kicks in—turning hype into insider profits. Without this ecosystem, Socrates idles; with it, it's a full manipulation machine. 

Exploitation of Granular Subscriber Data 

This isn't casual browsing—Pro users, the ones most likely to act on signals, are paying a premium to disclose their hand one card at a time. Armstrong's team gets a real-time map of each subscriber's focus, enabling 'perfect exploitation' far beyond aggregate trends. In low-liquidity markets like precious metals, even a single high-value user's addition could tip off insiders to front-run.

Therefore, statistics of this information - who is interested in which instrument for the purpose of trading - is available to Martin Armstrong for use and re-sale. This isn't just big-picture sentiment; the tiered model logs each user's exact instrument choices, additions, and preferences in their profile. A Pro subscriber upgrading for a niche asset? That's a direct signal of intent, traceable back to them for targeted schemes—far riskier than anonymized aggregates.

The concept of selling such information is definitely not alien to Martin Armstrong because he has offered me trades in the past as a deal sweetener in a last ditch attempt to recruit me, to stop me from campaigning against him. So he has something else to sell (which is not publicly known, such as the items in his online store). This something else, this information, is his special currency.

But how exactly is this data turned into profits?

The Self-Reinforcing Manipulation Cycle

The self-reinforcing cycle enabled by Socrates Pro's architecture: forced instrument disclosure → insider advantage → self-fulfilling signals → subscriber losses."

Because the Socrates Reversal system is the primary tool that users use (see this post for an anecdotal recent proof of that assumption), it is instructive to explore the EFFECT of this tool on the market when used.

The Reversal System is primarily a breakout trading strategy, meaning it instructs the user to buy / sell at very specific published price points when crossed. And Martin Armstrong claims high accuracy of these price points (the Reversals and other buy / sell signals derived from them). 

To see the effect of trading this breakout strategy, see my proof at: Socrates Long Term Past Performance Review.

If only a moderate number of traders start to act on these price points when crossed as advised, the strategy becomes self-fulfilling because the price will jump (break out) at these price points, caused by these very users who are likely to become bag holders. This has been confirmed in the past by amazed subscribers who observed the price jumping at these points, asking themselves why these price points could be so accurate?

The key point is that owners of the subscriber information can position themselves in the market in a pump and dump or poop and scoop scheme to profit from this information with little effort.

Why Subscribers Can't Profit by Counter-Trading

Because you don't have the subscriber statistics. Now it is not difficult to see how to profit from the subscriber statistics. Those statistics that are perhaps Martin Armstrong's best-kept secret.

This asymmetry is especially potent in Armstrong's preferred markets.

 Preferred Markets and Historical Manipulation Examples 

 Martin Armstrong has long had a preference for precious metals markets. Not surprisingly, gold and silver mining stocks were the first markets covered by his Socrates service even before the release of its online service. Some of these stocks are low transaction volume stocks that are easily manipulated.

To further strengthen my point, I am referring to Martin Armstrong's devastating advice to sell gold at the 2015 price bottom, a trade that he peddled using various channels, including his Word Economic Conference (WEC) at the time. Here are the details of that specific trade where he manipulated the information fed to his clients:

Quarterly Superposition Event in Gold 2015

Lack of Oversight and Offshore Operations 

To me it is incomprehensible that a service with such an obvious potential for illegal transactions can even exist without strict government supervision. I have tried to post this scheme as a warning at the reddit scam forum as "The Financial Chart Indicator Subscription Scam" but even there, it was rejected by the moderator because it contained the description of illegal market activity that I am outlining here which just proves my point.

Keeping the above in mind, it is not a surprise that it is not Martin Armstrong himself who is running the critical part of the Ask-Socrates business, but a man with name Erwin Pletsch who claims to work for Armstrong since 2016 and Ashley Warren who seems to be somewhat more difficult to locate. The official business web site is  Ask-Socrates (princetonfz.com), located offshore in the UAE.

Armstrong's History Makes Exploitation Inevitable 

Do you still think that the unrepentant convicted felon Martin Armstrong, convicted of financial crimes worth billions in the past, would NOT use such privileged information while reputable large organizations such as Facebook were caught using their subscriber information illegally, and being fined billions of US dollars for those privacy breaches?

See: Facebook to pay $5bn fine as regulator settles Cambridge Analytica complaint

External Confirmation: Who Really Benefits?

Just in case you think I have gone mad into full conspiracy mode, consider this:

WhiteOakFX in a Twitter tweet on March 2022 (emphasis added)

Socrates system about a major crash coming on March 14th [2020]. I had said I was very skeptical of him as he dodges questions etc... [I ]Said he was likely given date by bankers to lure retail shorts... Well guess what!?

...

I guess thats the price you pay to get your ass out of jail after 7 years.

For the full story, see:

Martin Armstrong's 2020 ECM Turning Point

 

Please see also:

Martin Armstrong Financial Advice: "Do not buy the Low!"

Where and how to complain