The retired Unofficial Armstrong Economics Fan Forum appeared to be a 100% commercial Socrates support forum run by a member of Martin Armstrong's inner circle, LateralusYellow. In fact, LateralusYellow followed Martin Armstrong's script so closely that it appears as if LateralusYellow is the master himself, posing as an enthusiast user who is still learning Socrates. See also:
Martin Armstrong The Hyper Shill
Before going into the details of his roles and actions in the group, let me make a guess who this shill is. Because he is in charge since the creation of the group on Feb 25, 2014, he must be a member of Martin Armstrong's inner circle. And because he has used exactly the same charting software that Erwin Pletsch used, my first guess was that LateralusYellow is someone who operated under Erwin Pletsch. See also Erwin Pletsch in Martin Armstrong Inner Circle Details.
Erwin Pletsch is the head of the offshore business that is used to run and sell the Socrates subscription service: Princeton FZ LLC (archive). See also Princeton FZ LLC in Martin Armstrong Inner Circle Details. But it turns out that my guess was wrong.
If you wondered what LateralusYellow is doing all day long, keep reading. You can listen to him in a video here:
VIX Forecast - Saturday November 14th
In this video, he expressed his frustration with the Forecast Arrays and added his own interpretation of them which he kept refining over the years (without success).
To remove any doubts that this forum is about trading with Socrates, I am quoting him from one of his earlier posts
I am not having enough success to make me confident enough to publicly post my trades in real time, but I'm hoping to get good enough to do that in the future on this sub.
So far, after all these years, he has not succeeded in posting successful Socrates trades in real time. Nevertheless, he gives plenty of advice to his audience on how to do it.
1) He is the moderator of that group. Since my participation, he has tightened the rules. An Automoderator is configured to delete comments and ban users where the comments include hyperlinks to this site and the bitcointalk forum with the topic Martin Armstrong Discussion. It also prevents fresh users with short membership from posting topics.
2) He is the main contributor, apparently a professional. He employs an assistant who produces financial charts with Socrates content for him that he posts at least once every few weeks. For the anecdotal proof of this, see:
Improved chart sharing for collaboration Feature Request
(He deleted that post, so here is the archived version: Deleted post on web.archive.org)
Quote (emphasis added)
I have an assistant that does all my charts for me. Right now I struggle to find time for them to log in to the account. We utilize a lot of drawings on our charts, and have them organized into folders on the object tree. Some of the lower time level drawings can be visually cluttering when looking at the big picture, so I toggle them on and off as needed. So at the very least it would be helpful if sharing charts allowed those viewing it to temporarily change the time level, as well as have limited access to the object tree for purposes of temporarily showing and hide objects. It is already possible to temporarily change the X and Y scaling from the shared view, so I don't understand why other temporary visual changes can't be made. Right now I have to make a copy of all the charts every day, which is just annoying and tedious. But what would be far more useful are genuine collaboration capabilities similar to google docs where multiple people can view and edit something at the same time. Even if that meant I had to pay for multiple accounts, it would be worth it for me.
With that clutter (drawings) that he wants to hide he is apparently referring to lower time frame Reversal details that he does not want to see on higher time frames.
In a reddit response that he later deleted, LateralusYellow claimed on Fri April 15 2022 that he trades for a living: Where to invest if I expect the US dollar to lose value against foreign currencies. Apparently this was an attempt to attract new Socrates users. In another reddit post he wrote that he is Canadian. Interestingly, an attendant of Martin Armstrong's World Economic Conferences has reported that one Canadian there claimed that he exclusively used Socrates for his trading and it earned him a very good living. A shill obviously. The same guy?
One more anecdotal piece of evidence. In Nasdaq Composite tests 3rd Major Monthly Bearish.he is making good on his promise to post real-time trades:
Quote (emphasis added)
I should also mention that many markets have been targeting the week of June 20th for a low, so I wouldn't be surprised if 10822 was broken. So by going long today ...
.
Such a statement can only be made by someone who has extensive access to the Socrates system because the discovery and identification of every single "target" requires a (paid for?) Socrates Premium market subscription ONE FOR EACH MARKET. Such targets are only suggested in the Forecast Arrays. Nevertheless, his trading efforts were not rewarded because the markets declined once again, exposing the Socrates contraption as a maximum effort-maximum loss scheme. Surpassing even the WonderLab’s Rube Goldberg machine in inefficiency.
It is certain that he peddled the official line of Armstrong Economics almost as if he was paid for it. I have multiple other experiences that confirm this. I usually probe suspects by using new accounts set up for that purpose, and to drain the resources of such shills and discredit and expose them. I am hesitating to quote my exchanges here in support of my claim directly in this case because LateralusYellow has the authority to delete my messages which would make such exercises futile. Perhaps I will do this later.
LateralusYellow makes strong efforts to deny any affiliation with Armstrong Economics which culminated in the change of the title image approximately two years ago when he added "UNAFFILIATED/UNOFFICIAL" to it.
This denial would be essential for the successful operation of the Socrates scam. Because for legal reasons, Martin Armstrong is not allowed to give any investment advice, but LateralusYellow is obviously doing so anonymously, posing as a trader and Socrates enthusiast who is just learning Socrates and sharing his experiences.
So it looks like another commercial Armstrong Economics blog where some shills, fans and controlled opposition are allowed to comment and to post as well. To support my claim further, here is a list of dozens of non-conforming posts that he deleted (in addition to deleted comments on existing posts):
- Why do you think MA lies about being wrong?
- After six years, I finally gave up on AE.com
- Armstrong lies
- Why Armstrongs longterm forcasts on the Market are worthless the market generally goes up over long period see table below
- Someone please post the gold rally private blog entry – thanks!
- What is your experience using reversals from the Socrates Pro/Trader level?
- Armstrong is now playing both sides again in his latest commentary:
- NEW private blog post- Complexity of Markets – Unexpected Consequences
- New Private blog post on the US Market (This is very interesting and can’t believe the question has been published) Armstrong called it
- It looks like Armstrong reads this Reddit judging from his latest blog post
- There I've finally do it after all these wasted years
- This BLOG post from March has aged really well
- BLOG POST - What is Different This Time Between 1987 & 2020 – 33 years Later?
- I AM A BETTER TRADER AND FORECASTER THAN ARMSTRONG
- Civil Unrest Turning Violent on Schedule
- 2020 Petition Denied
- 2009 SEC documents on Martin's conviction
- Armstrong Socrates is a Scam
- 2018 WEC The Greatest Trade of the Century By Martin Armstrong
- A panic week without panic
- Does Martin Armstrong lie?.
- COVID CRASH MANIPULATION
- Where can Armstrong's Work be Discussed?
- Real estate into 2023 article.
- Tweet: "Whenever anyone tells you *exactly* how the future is going to be / They're trying to sell you something"
- Government-backed trolls go after Marty?
- Socrates works or DOES NOT WORK?
- Lame Website
Charts as Smokescreens
LateralusYellow uses another tactic that is generally considered valuable in the community of financial charlatans: Charts as smokescreens. Charts are easily produced with charting software especially if they are the same over and over. The more complicated the better. Even more so if they are based on templates as he explained. He uses this as an effective tool to drown out inconvenient responses and questions. As an example, see this discussion which starts in a critical tone:
Cryptocurrency day of reckoning
Alternative_Call4966 answers:
Can't answer but all I can say is he[Martin Armstrong]'s been consistently wrong on crypto so inverse whatever he says probably on this market
No-Ebb-5034 answers:
He’s wrong on everything dude. Real estate, crypto, you name it. And then that psycho will say he called it after the fact.
LateralusYellow answers:
His calls on Bitcoin were wrong but his argument for why it won't last in the long run are valid. Since you have a history of just being a dismissive asshole you're no longer welcome here.
BANNED!
Finally LateralusYellow posts a DOW chart and starts lecturing about mandatory Covid-19 vaccination.
Any decent moderator would delete that response as off-topic spam.
Lateralus joined by Armstrong Sock Puppets, too
What would a post or response by the moderator be without an organic discussion? No problem. In a moment, or perhaps delayed a bit as to be not too obvious, sock puppet kiam83 comes to the rescue. Just check out his history with his delighting posts like "Well said ..." and more elaborate Socrates teachings. This guy is a professional shill, no doubt. This sock puppet is just an example. LateralusYellow has many of them. I found that more than 90% of the traffic in that group is generated by such shills.How? I contact all of them via private messages, using many of my different accounts. My conversation usually starts with some criticism and some links to this site. As a response I get fake claims by the shill such as he made 500% profit during the last 12 months trading with Socrates, and a suggestion that I should attend a paid Socrates seminar to get similar results. The latest example is the reddit post by user 1azzaaa1 "Trading view". A super-duper shill. Not too obvious, just having a technical question to save the group from dying. His question is replied to by other shills of course. Very organic!
Reincarnation as Lateralus Smith on Facebook
My final Conclusion
Years later, after some reflection, I see LateralusYellow in a somewhat different role. As we can learn from his posts, we can see his attempts to make Socrates work for himself. He used ever more complicated computer setups and workarounds in an attempt to fix what he considered Socrates inconsistencies and bugs.
At first, when I reverse-engineered part of the Socrates system, I was irritated by these "bugs" as well. But it turned out that those "bugs" were just an expression of the rather simplistic computer logic that Socrates uses which is in line with what was available in the 1980's, the era where the Socrates logic was constructed. This logic has never changed since then.
At the very end of his appearances, it became obvious that he had created an Overfitting monster that he could no longer manage. It consisted of arrays of multiple Forecast Arrays for each time frame (going back in time), and THOSE for ALL time frames. He would have needed multiple big computer screens to visualize the whole.
Here is one example that he published on May 07 2022 in the Facebook group:
These are three Forecast Arrays in the same monthly time frame, for the same trading instrument.
Lateralus Yellow was last seen on July 31, 2022.
The fact that he disappeared from the scene after his failed last ditch attempt indicates that he was genuinely convinced that there was some merit in Socrates and that he would only need to study it harder to make it work for himself.
For Armstrong, he would not have been an interesting shill candidate for his inner circle because he would not project Socrates as a simple tool that one can use to make money fast.
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