Martin Armstrong's Socrates

Socrates is Martin Armstrong's brand name for a collection of Technical Analysis tools and his commercial subscription service that makes these tools and a private blog available on the internet. In addition to this, he loosely uses the Socrates term to conceptually associate other gadgets such as Martin Armstrong's Economic Confidence Model (ECM) with it, which helps him to sell books and reports.

Martin Armstrong also uses the term Socrates for his imaginary computer (and program) that he claims "has predicted virtually everything correctly that happened in the past since the 1980's". See his claim in this YouTube interview. His claim is fraudulent as most of his claims as shown in The Mother of all Forecast Claims.

Socrates The Subscription Service

Martin Armstrong authored a video of a Socrates features walk-through here: Socrates Access , by Martin Armstrong.

All users of the subscription service are eventually frustrated by the fact that trading based on it leads to losses long term. For my long term trading analysis, see:

Socrates Long Term Past Performance Review

This is confirmed by Socrates Subscriber Testimonials 

It is a proven fact that  even Martin Armstrong cannot make any profits using Socrates.

Ironically, he exploits the obscurity and failure of the system by selling a $750 trading webinar which is run by that veteran Erwin Pletsch. He mainly tells the old  story of "time meets price" which makes using the system even more irritating and unsuccessful. Over time, minor bells and whistles are added to the system but these do not have trading benefits.

The Fundamental Flaw in Socrates

Many duped users who are still using Socrates ask for statistics, or what they may eloquently call "data driven analysis". This could only be done if Socrates had a single output such as a buy / sell signal. Only then would it qualify as a system that can be analyzed.

But Socrates has multiple signals (outputs) which are in conflict with each other. Armstrong recommends to sometimes trade against one signal using another, such as using Forecast Arrays against Reversals. When to to this is subject to Armstrong's cherry-picking hindsight claims and there is no system that can be used to cherry-pick in advance which of the signals to use in which case.

There is an exception however where Socrates provides a definite buy/sell signal. I have analyzed trading based on this buy/sell signal. Again, see:

Socrates Long Term Past Performance Review

While this overview should be enough to deter even the most ardent Armstrong supporters, I will continue with my admittedly futile analysis into the Socrates components, in case someone entertains the idea of using them in their own mix of trading tools.

The Socrates Reversal System

From the highest perspective, the Reversal System  is a breakout trend following system. Since a trend following system cannot be used without a trend reversal system that detects the end of a trend, it has to be seen in combination with the Forecast Array System. From a lower but critical perspective, the Reversal System is a breakout system based on a primitive resistance / support look back. See more here: The Reversal System - Engineering Background. As such, in practical trading, users on average become bag holders while more successful traders perhaps trade against them via selling at resistance and by buying at support. Details on how Armstrong Economics can exploit this "feature" are in Socrates The Market Manipulator. This is the strongest warning possible to stay away from this system.

The Socrates Forecast Array System

The Forecast Array System from the highest perspective is a trend reversal detection system that is based on the assumption that future price movement can be predicted from the observation of past price movement. More specifically, it is based on a mix of archaic and obscure cycle theories. In practical trading, when used in combination with the Reversal system, it creates situations where a) users exit otherwise successful trend-following trades prematurely or even reverse themselves against the trend, or b) the system creates confusion because multiple ambiguous signals are created in the same time frame or different time frames.

Most users claim they do not understand the Forecast Array System. The reason of that clearly is its ambiguity and the fact that this ambiguity cannot be resolved. However, one can resolve the ambiguity by only using its primary aggregate signal, in which case its utter failure becomes too obvious.

See more:

Socrates Forecast Array Nonsense  

and 

Comments on Socrates Forecast Arrays 

The Socrates Economic Confidence Model ECM

So far, this site has not too much coverage of his ECM, but enough to show that it is just another lucky numbers shell game, another smoke and mirrors device.

Please see:

Martin Armstrong's Economic Confidence Model (ECM)

Economic Confidence Model, just a play on numbers of 8.6  

If you really want to get scammed, you can pay $95 for a slice of it here:

ECM March 14th, 2022