Related: Moron of the Month: Martin Armstrong
Convicted Ponzi scheme crook, failed commodities trader and forecasting charlatan Martin Armstrong continues his desperate campaign to rewrite his past while pulling all kinds of stunts aimed at fooling low IQ sheep into thinking he has a clue as to what is going on in the economy and capital markets.
Aside from larger scale, more obvious tactics utilized by Armstrong to mislead his clueless sheep with regards to his track record, after a good deal of investigation I have very good reason to believe Armstrong employs individuals to make extremely favorable posts about him online. Perhaps Armstrong is even making these posts himself.
Whatever the case may be, I’m quite certain these posts are fake because they are always the same, referring to him as "amazing" and "brilliant" or the "best economic mind in the world" when the videos and articles for which these posts have been made do not even remotely come close to providing any basis for these accolades. On the contrary, any intelligent person would most likely view Armstrong as a complete moron posing as an investment authority.
As a matter of fact, let's not forget that Armstrong is so clueless that he was responsible for having generated "spectacular losses" to such an extent that his complete absence of any degree of honesty and morality led him to create a Ponzi scheme as a remedy for his massive losses.
For those who might not be familiar with Martin Armstrong, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud, and commodities fraud, a felony arising out of Armstrong's operation of Princeton Economics.
Prior to registering as an investment adviser, Armstrong had never worked for a Wall Street firm, nor did he graduate from college.
He claims to have been “self-taught.” I suppose he taught himself how to cheat investors because he certainly never learned how to trade commodities, as evidenced by the massive trading losses he suffered.
The district court sentenced Armstrong to sixty months' imprisonment and three years supervised release, and ordered him to pay $80,000,001 in restitution to sixty defrauded customers.
As part of his guilty plea, Armstrong entered a sworn allocution admitting to and describing his crime. In his allocution, Armstrong admitted that between 1992 and 1999, he sold promissory notes issued by Princeton Economics subsidiaries ("Princeton Notes") to investors, mostly Japanese corporations.
Armstrong, through his agents, represented to the investors that the proceeds from the sale of the Princeton Notes would be held in accounts at Republic New York Securities ("Republic") and that those accounts "would be separate and segregated from Republic's own accounts and would not be available to Republic for its own benefit."
According to Armstrong's allocution, after he suffered "some millions of dollars of trading losses," he decided "not to disclose to investors that . . . substantial losses had been experienced in this trading of futures. And we did not disclose it." Armstrong also admitted that his concealment of his losses went beyond non-disclosure: "letters were sent by my company to investors concerning how much money was in fact in the accounts assigned to them. I . . . did send out those letters, even though . . . I knew the amounts in the accounts were less than the letters stated."
After having been barred from working as an investment adviser by the US securities industry, Armstrong has been on a crusade to rewrite his past as well as attempt to create a credible track record of economic forecasts. Armstrong has a good deal of experience in generating PR and fudging his track record. After all, this is how he was able to convince investors to hand over money to him which is lost trading commodities.
Despite his claims to the contrary, Armstrong has no official written track record that can be relied upon. While he has written jumbled nonsense, he makes sure to keep things open-ended enough in order to flip-flop when things turn against him. In short, he offers virtually no transparency with regards to his so-called track record. He mainly makes videos, gives fake interviews to shills and enters posts on his blog. This is enables him to flip-flop and alter what he said in the past without much if any notice by the suckers who are foolish enough to be foolish by his teenage antics.
Imagine if you had been convicted of running a Ponzi scheme and you were consequently barred from the securities industry. After you were released from prison, if you wanted to convince people you credible, wouldn't you make sure to publish all of your "research" in order for sophisticated investors to determine whether or not you had a clue and whether or not you were publishing legitimate research?
On the contrary, if you were clueless, you would not want knowledgeable investors to see your "research" because they would realize you were nothing more than a fraud. Thus, you would be much better off by allowing only unsophisticated sheep who subscribed to your research to examine your "forecasts" because you could play word games with these naive suckers and convince them that you made predictions when you really didn't.
As the leading investment forecaster in the world (a claim I have personally backed by a $1,000,000 guarantee) and someone who has worked at major Wall Street houses as a financial adviser, merchant banker, hedge fund and pension adviser, as well as in the venture capital industry, someone who has advised billionaires and multi-billion dollar hedge funds, venture capital funds and endowments, I can tell you that based on my examination of Martin Armstrong and his “forecasts,” he is not a legitimate forecaster of any kind. He is a complete snake oil salesman.
If anyone can identify a single detailed and insight analysis written by Martin Armstrong which ended up predicting any major financial event with reasonable accuracy, I’d like to see such a publication. Oh, and I’ll need evidence of the publication date because I don’t trust this man one bit.
I’m willing to bet not a single publication of this nature exists.
One would assume that a man with claims like Armstrong should have hundreds of such publications. After all, he claims to be a great forecaster. He claims to have forecasted this and that, so show us the evidence Martin.
So where is the proof of these claims? There is none. I've certainly never found any.
Based on my own investigations, I have concluded that Armstrong has been able to convince naïve people that he predicted something by making claims of a previous prediction that supposedly came true in a speaking event or video. Apparently some people actually believe this nonsense.
Hey Martin. The whole point of a forecast is for people to have access to it BEFORE THE EVENT OCCURS.
No one cares about what you CLAIM you forecast AFTER THE EVENT HAS OCCURRED.
Once a fraud, always a fraud...
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