The History of Martin Armstrong's Socrates

 Up to Martin Armstrong's Socrates

Here I will present evidence that, well before his legal troubles that lead to his 11 year prison term, Martin Armstrong already had the main components of his computer program that he sells today as his "Socrates". Socrates is a suite of programs based on the technology that he would have used to generate his $700 million trading losses.

 

Software Architecture

We need to first understand that the Socrates subscription web service is made up of two major parts:

1. The core module that existed before his $700 million trading losses. Armstrong got it developed for him between 1980 and 2000 although he claims that he is the only person who wrote it. See: Martin Armstrong The Computer Programmer
   
2. The web service, completed not earlier than 2016 that executes the core module. Armstrong first mentioned its new name "Socrates" in 2014: Socrates – The Launch.
   

Armstrong confirms this division on multiple blog pages by saying that the web service gets its data from the core module that runs on a different server:

Socrates and Cyber War

Preventing attacks has been one of our greatest concerns when trying to provide access to Socrates. The only SAFE way to accomplish this monumental problem has been to create time locks, so to speak, and by no means will Socrates be connected online through the services. Only the results will upload to our servers but there will be no path directly to Socrates in order to prevent hackers.

In June 2019 I received reliable information about a MongoDB database running on his web server that contained the computed technical values such as Reversals, Forecast Arrays, GMW, heat map for 1,000 markets. In other words, that database contains the uploaded results.

"Socrates" before Armstrong's Legal Troubles

Armstrong himself claims the year 1986 existence of Socrates:

How Our AI Computer Forecasts the Failure of Schwab & World Economic Forum

These observations were behind the design of Socrates. Here I am in our Australia Office from 1986 with an IBM XT we would provide clients to access Socrates.

 

Software Component Segregation

From the following it becomes obvious that he only made his ECM (PI model) available to clients while he kept newer developments such as Reversals and Forecast Arrays for his own trading purposes.

Armstrong presents further evidence that his clients leased his PI model (not Reversals and Forecast Arrays) in:

Socrates Forecasting the Insane Future

He shows a 2001 legal document with a dispute about a source code escrow (transcript below):

RE: Princeton re: license stipulation
1/2/01 8:54:25PM Eastern Standard Time
TSchiavoni@OMM.com (Schiavoni, Tancred)
Mart2u@aol.com ('Mart2u@aol.com')
TSchiavoni@OMM.com (Schiavoni, Tancred)
So there is no misunderstanding, we are going to ask the Court
direct that any compensation payable to Armstrong, Sr by [redacted] be
deposited into a frozen escrow account pending a determination of title and
compliance relevant portions of PI. In part, we are doing this because
Armstrong Sr. has refused to turn over the uncompiled source code for the
model that is being licensed. Without the uncompiled source code, no one
can repair the model other than Armstrong. Accordingly, it looks like
Armstrong structured the "consulting" agreement to benefit indirectly from a
corporate asset that was withheld. Among other things, we are are
concerned about leaving him in a position to constantly blackmail [redacted] who
have no other choice but to turn to Armstrong to maintain the software
as long as it remains missing.

Technical Evidence

Please let me add some facts that further support the pre-2000 existence of his Socrates core software from a technical perspective.

Martin Armstrong still executes the old core module on his private desktops today. The software is so old that it no longer executes directly on contemporary hardware. It needs a DOS emulator with CGA low resolution graphics support.

Proof:

Link to the video on Armstrong's site

 

The video shows the DOS Box DOS emulator ("DOSBox 0.74" in the title bar of the left frame) in the crude oil futures chart and later in the forecast array. The actor speaking and operating the DOS program is Martin Armstrong.

A still image that shows the DOSBox 0.74 emulator title is available at Armstrong failed to predict crude oil PANIC

The chart types including resolution and style that Armstrong uses today in 2025 are still the same as in this 2013 video.

Other recent images show Armstrong's PEI (Princeton Economics International) logo on his trading software screen. He wouldn't have put that logo on newer software, at least not because PEI has been effectively bankrupt since September 13, 1999.

PEI logo on screen behind Armstrong during a Sept 2025 interview

More logic:
 

One could speculate that Armstrong, after getting out of jail, hired legacy developers to develop his core module on the old DOS operating system with low resolution CGA graphics. That would not be plausible because:

• The 1990 hardware and software to develop such programs was no longer widely available 23 years later in 2013
• Development speed and efficiency on newer, current hardware would have been vastly superior.
  

There is additional verifiable evidence that the core module via the Socrates web service contains errors that can only be explained with very bad integer logic only found in primitive assembler programs being used 35 years ago. See user observations here:

 

Integer logic observation of a Socrates user in 2019 

If you observe the blog post from Armstrong, quite often, he is taking out the decimal places of the prices.  That simply tells you one thing.  His code is NOT even using floating point (or real) numbers.  It's integer-based.  He just scales things up by 100 or 1000, so that his system can handle it.  That also means that his codes are really old.  So in a way, you are kind of relying on some codes that he has written probably from 30 years ago.

and my analysis here:

Arithmetic Errors in the Reversal System

Conclusion

Summing it up, the lack of credibility and sincerity of Armstrong's Socrates subscription service is no longer a question.

Before his conviction, Armstrong marketed his firm's trading prowess with claims of being a technology leader in computerized technical trading - based on the technology that he would have used to generate his $700 million trading losses.

So far, I haven't found a single shred of information that would contradict this scenario.