His advice has been sought by numerous governments. Armstrong uses his own created Economic Confidence Model (also called the “pi” cycle) in his forecasting.
“Pi is the perfect circle, the mathematical discovery that goes back into ancient times, its the way energy moves, it is why we are born, live and die it is the ultimate knowledge of the theory of everything.”
“I didn’t expect it to be so precise-it drove government nuts they wanted a list of all my clients worldwide as if I was manipulating the world economy,” said Armstrong in an interview.
Critics think Martin Armstrong is a charlatan, a conman. But others believe him to be a guru and a genius.
Martin Armstrong’s predictions are nearly always right (he has a better probability of getting it right than a flip of a coin).
His “pi” cycle successfully predicted an upturn in the price of commodities in 1977.
He correctly predicted the 1987 crash and the top of the Japanese market.
Martin Armstrong also forecasted the Russian financial crisis of 1998 and the subprime financial crisis of 2008.
However, Armstrong incorrectly predicted that a sovereign debt crisis, or “Big Bang” as he called it, would begin on 1 October 2015.
Paradoxically, Armstrong’s successful forecasting might also have been his downfall. Martin Armstrong was jailed for 11 eleven years on trumped-up allegations for running a Ponzi scheme and seven years for contempt of court.
In a documentary entitled The Forecaster, Martin Armstrong explains that the 11-year imprisonment was a way to try to pressure him to hand over his forecasting program to the FBI.
Armstrong is finally released after serving seven years in jail.
Martin Armstrong has traded as a forecaster under various business names, including Princeton Economics International, Princeton Economic Consultants, Inc., Economic Consultants of Princeton, Inc., and Armstrong Report, Inc.
At age 13, Armstrong began working at a coin and stamp dealership in Pennsauken, New Jersey. In 1965 at age fifteen he bought a bag of rare Canadian pennies that for a brief period would have made him a millionaire, had he sold them before they crashed in value.
Martin Armstrong progressed from gold coin investments to tracking commodity prices for precious metals.
After finishing high school, Armstrong briefly attended RCA Institutes (now TCI College of Technology) in New York City and audited courses at Princeton University but he did not obtain a college degree.
In 1973, he began publishing commodity market predictions as a hobby.
In 1983, Armstrong began accepting and fulfilling paid subscriptions for a commodity market forecast newsletter.
Martin Armstrong’s advice has been sought by numerous governments. He uses his own created Economic Confidence Model (also called the “pi” cycle) in his forecasting.
INVESTMENT STYLE
Martin Armstrong’s economic philosophy was influenced by his father, a lawyer whose grandfather had lost a fortune in the 1929 stock market crash.
Armstrong believes that assets do not linearly appreciate over time. He believes that markets are cyclical. Moreover, he sees many cycles within a cycle and that an economic panic occurred every 8.6 years (or 3141 days, which is approximately π × 1000), hence the “pi” cycle.
There comes a time when we just have to stand up for what we believe, or life loses all meaning – Martin Armstrong
LEARNING RESOURCES
Martin Armstrong has done a number of interviews. The following could provide traders/investors with some insight.
Introduction to Martin Armstrong’s Trading Cycles
In short, Armstrong’s Economic Confidence Model is an economic cycle theory that proposes that economic waves occur every 8.6 years, or 3141 days, which is approximately π × 1000 {\displaystyle \pi \times 1000}. At the end of each cycle, there is a crisis after which the economic climate improves until the next 8.6-year crisis point.
The theory is based on a list of historical financial panics (26 in 224 years, between 1683 and 1907), producing a frequency of roughly 8.6 years.
Martin Armstrong concluded that a wave of 8.6 years moved through larger waves building in intensity amounting to six waves of 8.6 years constructing a major long wave of 51.6 years. Also key are quarter-cycles of 2.15 years.
Pi is the perfect circle, the mathematical discovery that goes back into ancient times, its the way energy moves, it is why we are born, live and die it is the ultimate knowledge of the theory of everything – Martin Armstrong
CONNECT WITH INVESTOR
Follow this World Top Investor via their various social media channels and read more about their background and current investment interests on their official website:
Martin Armstrong
www.armstrongeconomics.com
