The Forecaster

To the global trading community Martin Armstrong may be known as the ultimate forecaster who devised a computer model capable of collecting and analysing thousands of years of economic, political and financial data, in order to predict future market trends. The computer programme he designed is so “intelligent” that it allowed his firm Princeton Economics to literally predict the rise and fall of entire nations. To data, Armstrong has accurately predicted the savings and loan crash of 1987, the collapse of the Japanese economy, the collapse of the Russian Rouble, the dotcom bubble and the 2008 financial crash.

Armstrong is a controversial figure. Due to his accurate predictions the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission believed that he was conspiring with a syndicate, or acting on insider information, to gain trading advantages.

Armstrong’s defence was that he was acting on a programme designed by himself, the authorities wanted the codes. Armstrong refused to hand them over, was nailed for contempt of court and thrown in a Federal prison for ten years.

“He didn't want to go to college, so I said you have got to do something, so he enrolled in RCA Computer school”, said Armstrong's mother. “I wanted to create a system that could store the knowledge of centuries to predict the future. The entire trading community would scramble to see the signals when they were released.” The Universal Bank of Lebenon asked him whether he could make a model (computer). He concluded that country was going to fall apart in eight days, that prediction was correct.

Soon after, Armstrong had a clash with the authorities. 

"We want the source code," said an FBI agent. "I said you are not getting it, sorry," replied Armstrong. The FBI then shut down his office and closed down the accounts. "They wanted what I have spent my entire life developing and I am not giving it to them."

So the primary reason for Armstrong being locked up and the keys thrown away was due to the fact that he wouldn't handover the programme codes, which the US Government was extremely eager to possess. Ten years imprisonment would break most men, but Armstrong refused to cave in, he has still not revealed his codes to the US Government.

He’s out of prison now, but while incarcerated Armstrong continued to analyze, write, sketch charts, and share his findings via surrogates who posted his work on the internet.

Reading his writings is like peeking into the mind of a genius. It’s a journey into a lateral dimension, geopolitics, economics, global events and connecting the dots to forecast with incredible accuracy political and economic outcomes.

Armstong was pondering over the following question back in June. What if the panic caused by a collapsing global economy leads to a limited crash and then sends stock markets soaring?

Armstrong takes an alternative view believing that an economic collapse will play out in that way. In other words, we will see negative divergence to the maximum, with fundamentals pointing sharply downwards and the stock market shooting up. Even though mainstream will be unable to hide the reality, more people reliant on food stamps and food banks for their survival, mass unemployment hidden by zero hour contracts and low paid part time work. Company results will be made to look good with more of the same; stock buy backs and downsizing, cutting costs, output capacity and cutting employment to increase profits. The Goldilocks economy will spin along, occasionally there will be a few high profile cases of someone making a fortune on the markets, illustrating to the herd of hungry masses that they should get off the streets, stop protesting, find any miserable work they can, save and play the game. Because after all, it is just child's play, they too can lift themselves out of poverty.

So what we are seeing then has little to do with economics, since a buoyant market is a powerful ideological message to say look people capitalism works, it is the best and only system for allocating scarce resources and spreading wealth, which has lifted millions of people out of poverty.

Like an obstinate child that refuses to give in and admit that maybe the system has passed its expiry date. The stock market will power along, it is the central banks perpetual motion machine where the fundamentals have been surgically removed from the markets. It now serves only one purpose, a political one, to advertise to the world that capitalism is robust and can survive anything, come and join us. Failure will never be admitted. An obstinate child never gives in, even if it means smashing the toys on the ground in tantrums to get their way.

“The U.S. stock market, although it sounds a bit crazy, it’s liable to go up very dramatically. I would think we could go up 50% at least. But it’s going to depend upon when the capital flows start coming in very dramatically, and they’ll come when you start to see those types of geopolitical problems [along with]…economic problems from Europe. But, I mean, there will be more dips—one more little crash first—and then it’s going to take off,” said Armstrong.

"One way or the other, whether stocks rise or fall, we’ve entered an unprecedented period in world history."

The end result, regardless of how we get there, will likely culminate in a war unlike anything human civilization has ever witnessed before as politicians the world over angle to convince their citizenry that someone else is to blame for their problem.

Though we can’t predict with certainty the dates or sequences of events that will lead to the eventual downfall of the system as we know it today, we can, at the very least, prepare in advance and insulate ourselves against the brunt of the hit when it does happen.

Deep down, though many refuse to admit it, we know that something just isn’t right.”