Martin Armstrong's Midterm Forecast, Checked: Senate, Dow and Gold

Educational content only, not investment advice. Mining stocks are high risk.

By Ben McGregor

Tuesday, November 10, 2026

Cycle forecaster Martin Armstrong says the November 3 midterms open two years of political turmoil, with stagflation, a recession and a January turn higher for gold and silver. Some of his claims match the public record, and some do not, including his own call on the Senate before the vote.

Several checkable points hold up. President Barack Obama's party did lose nine Senate seats in 2014, and the Nasdaq did fall harder than the Dow after this vote.

The misses are clear too. Harry Truman does not hold the record for midterm Senate losses, and the Dow was well below its August record when he spoke. In August he also said Democrats could win the House but not the Senate, and Democrats went on to win both.

He spoke to Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com in a video titled "It's Going to be Total Chaos," posted to Rumble on November 7, 2026. The video gives no recording date, but Hunter speaks of the election as the Tuesday just past. His points appear below in his order, each marked as his opinion or as a checked claim.

Who is Martin Armstrong, and what does he sell?

Armstrong runs Armstrong Economics and its Socrates computer model. He says it forecasts from cycles, meaning patterns in past dates that he expects to repeat.

His firm sells Socrates memberships at $15, $55 and $150 a month, according to its plan page. It also sells books, webinars and special reports, including a "2026 Midterm Elections & Beyond" report for $39.95. In this interview he promotes his Orlando conference, set for December 4 to 6, and a book. Hunter's show runs paid ads, including one from a precious-metals dealer.

His record also includes a federal fraud case. In 1999 the SEC and the CFTC sued Armstrong and his firm, Princeton Economics International, over notes the firm sold to investors. He pleaded guilty on August 17, 2006 to one count of conspiracy to commit securities, commodities and wire fraud. In April 2007 a judge sentenced him to 60 months and ordered $80 million in restitution, the US Attorney's office in Manhattan said. He had spent about seven years jailed for civil contempt before that, and he was released in 2011, The New York Times reported.

Did Martin Armstrong's Socrates model call the 2026 midterms?

Armstrong opened with his opinion that markets and voters move on expectations. He then said Socrates showed Texas would turn to the Democrats while Florida stayed Republican.

That happened. The Associated Press reports that Democrats James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa won the Texas Senate and governor races, while Republican Byron Donalds won in Florida.

The timing of the call is harder to check. His blog post making the Texas and Florida claim is dated November 8, after the vote. His paid midterm report from August sits behind a paywall.

What he said in public before the vote points the other way. On August 15, USAWatchdog quoted him on that report: "The bottom line looks like the Democrats can take the House, but not the Senate." Reuters reported on November 6 that Democrats took the Senate after gaining seven seats, for a 54 to 44 majority counting two independents.

He also said Texas has mostly been a Democratic state, which is largely true. But his November 8 post says every governor before the last three was a Democrat. That skips Republican Bill Clements, whom the Texas State Library calls "the first Republican governor of Texas in over 100 years" when he took office in 1979.

How big was the 2026 Senate loss next to past midterms?

Armstrong called the national result a blue wave but said it was not historic. "Even Obama lost in the midterm nine seats in the Senate," he said. That checks out for 2014, when Republicans gained nine seats; in Obama's first midterm, in 2010, his party lost six.

He went on: "The historical record for how much they lost on the midterm belongs to Harry Truman." He put Truman's loss at 12 seats, which is wrong. In 1946 Republicans gained 12 seats, but Truman's Democrats had a net loss of 11.

The record belongs to 1958, when President Dwight Eisenhower's Republicans lost 13 Senate seats, according to House Clerk statistics cited on Wikipedia. Armstrong blames Truman's loss on the atomic bombing of Japan, but the same Wikipedia page points to postwar strikes and the fight over meat price controls. His model, he said, shows Democrats losing in 2028, a forecast nothing can test yet.

What does he expect from Washington over the next two years?

Armstrong forecasts that the Democratic Party will split. Criticizing free health-care plans, he said friends in Canada came to the US for operations, a personal story CMR did not check.

He said Gallup polls show 60 to 70 percent of Americans do not trust the government, a Gallup figure CMR did not find. Pew Research Center reported on December 4, 2025 that just 17% of Americans trust Washington to do what is right most of the time or more. By that measure, distrust runs higher than he said.

Looking ahead, he said "it's going to be total chaos." On the economy, he said "we're going into a stagflation, a recession, where the economic growth will now decline." Stagflation means prices keep rising while growth stalls and jobs get harder to find. That call, covering 2027 and the year after, is his forecast.

Later he came back to the seat count. "This is a minimal one. Yet, the news makes it sound like it's a big tsunami," he said. For the Senate that is partly true, since the seven-seat loss is smaller than in 2014, 1946 or 1958. It is larger than the six seats lost in 2006 and 2010, and Democrats also gained about 40 House seats, Reuters reported.

In his view, the recent sell-off in artificial intelligence stocks came from talk that Democrats will rein in the industry. He said impeaching President Trump would likely go nowhere, because removal needs two thirds of the Senate. That rule is in Article I of the US Constitution. Hunter raised his own voter-fraud claims during the interview, and those were not verified.

What does he say about recession, Ukraine and NATO?

Armstrong said he does not expect the economy to crash, but he expects a recession. He also expects Democrats to keep funding Ukraine and sees no peace deal, which are his forecasts.

Two claims in this stretch check out. Ukraine has resumed strikes on Russian refineries, and Euronews reported that drones hit the Kirishi refinery, Russia's second largest, on November 9. He also said Congress passed a rule that a president cannot leave NATO without its approval. A law signed in December 2023 bars withdrawal without two thirds of the Senate or an act of Congress.

Did the Dow and Nasdaq move the way he described?

Armstrong said the Dow has been making new highs because large sums from Europe flow into the blue-chip Dow stocks and pass over the tech-heavy Nasdaq. So, he said, the Nasdaq would fall faster, and Socrates projected a short correction lasting two to three months.

The new-highs claim is out of date. The Dow's record close was 54,349.12 on August 5, 2026. On November 6 it closed at 51,285.73, or 5.64% below that record, Dow Jones Market Data shows. On Monday it rose 2.15% to 52,389.75, CNBC reported, leaving it about 3.6% below the record.

The Nasdaq part fits last week. On November 5 the Nasdaq fell 5.5% while the Dow fell 3.4%, CNBC reported. For the week, the Nasdaq lost 3.4% against 0.9% for the Dow. The pattern ran the other way on Monday, when the Nasdaq rose 2.74%. His reason, European money, is his opinion; CNBC tied the sell-off to fears of slower data-centre building after the Democratic wins.

Why does he say the Fed has few answers to stagflation?

Armstrong said the Federal Reserve has no tools against stagflation, because higher rates do not lower energy prices. He also said "long-term interest rates are set by the world economy not domestic." Both are his opinions.

December WTI crude, the main US oil price, settled at $86.85 a barrel on November 9, down 4.38%, The Edge and CNBC reported. Markets priced about an 81% chance of a December Fed rate hike on November 9, Trading Economics reported. That was up from 71% before the jobs report on November 6.

On Europe, he said Brussels fears Marine Le Pen in France's April vote and is courting the UK and Canada, which are his views. The vote date is real: the first round is April 18, 2027, the French government says.

What does Martin Armstrong expect for gold and silver after January?

Armstrong said his model flags the first quarter of 2027 for bigger swings in currencies and interest rates. "Gold is going down short term, but then it's going to rise when people realize the geopolitical stuff is coming back," he said. That Martin Armstrong gold forecast is his view, and CMR does not forecast prices.

Asked about silver near $50 an ounce, he said he would wait a few weeks, which is his own timing view. On gold, he said: "Gold can go down into the mid-3000 range, but it's more timing." He expects gold to turn higher from January, after a noisy stretch until then.

So far, gold has moved up. Front-month COMEX gold, the futures contract closest to delivery, set its 2026 settlement low of $3,885.70 on October 30. It settled at $4,105.00 on November 9, Dow Jones Market Data shows. That left it 22.82% below its record of $5,318.40, set on January 29. December silver settled at $52.693 an ounce, up 1.45%, and December gold at $4,114.50, The Edge reported.

CMR has covered his gold views before, in a February 5 post, a June 7 post and a July 27 post. This time his gold and silver outlook rests on the midterm calendar.

Why does he think interest rates must rise?

Armstrong said bank failures are now mostly a European story, pointing to Austria's 1931 bank collapse and to about 9,000 failed US banks. Both check out. Austria's Creditanstalt set off a panic in May 1931. The FDIC says about 9,000 US banks closed from late 1929 through the end of 1933.

"Europe is going to commit suicide. Good for the dollar," he said. In his view, money leaving Europe goes into private US assets more than government bonds, so the Treasury must offer higher rates to sell its bonds. Higher interest costs then deepen deficits, he said.

That chain is his opinion, but parts of it can be tracked. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, the US government's benchmark borrowing rate, closed at 4.863% on November 9, Dow Jones Market Data shows. That is below its 52-week high of 5.310%, set on October 5. In late September, mining.com reported, citing US Treasury data, that the yield had reached its highest level since 2007.

What does this mean for a retirement-age reader?

For a sound-money saver, the useful part of this interview is the mechanism. Bigger deficits mean more bonds to sell, and if buyers want higher rates, the government's interest bill and its deficits grow together. Stagflation adds rising prices to slower growth, which squeezes anyone living on a fixed budget.

Each link in that chain shows up in public data, such as inflation reports, central bank decisions and bond yields. Those same numbers move gold, which pays no interest and so competes with bonds when yields rise.

A forecaster who sells reports and conference seats has a reason to stress hits and play down misses. His August call on the Senate is a useful test, because it was made in public before the vote.

CMR's November 5 post on the mining agenda covered policy, and a November 6 post on silver and gold covered price swings.

How I read it. More of Armstrong's checkable claims hold up than fail. But most of the hits are background facts, while the misses include his public call on the Senate and his claim that the Dow was making new highs. The parts that matter most to savers, stagflation and rising rates, are the ones that public data will test over the coming weeks.

What are people also asking about Martin Armstrong?

What is the Socrates forecast?

Socrates is the computer model Armstrong Economics sells by subscription, which he says reads cycles in markets and politics. Its record, as checked here, is mixed.

What does Martin Armstrong mean by Dow vs Nasdaq capital flows?

He says large sums from Europe favour the blue-chip Dow over the tech-heavy Nasdaq. The Nasdaq did fall harder in the week to November 6, though CNBC pointed to data-centre worries as the cause.

How did gold react to the 2026 midterm elections?

Spot gold was up 2.4% at $4,021.68 an ounce on November 4 as the dollar weakened after the Democratic wins, Crux Investor reported that day. A day later, Crux put that session's full gain at 3.4%.

What to watch: which dates will test his forecast?

1. Tuesday, November 10, 2026, 8:30 a.m. Eastern: The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the October consumer price index, which tracks what households pay for everyday goods and services. It gives a first test of his stagflation call.
2. Monday, November 16, 2026: Statistics Canada releases Canada's consumer price index for October.
3. Wednesday, December 9, 2026: The Federal Reserve announces its rate decision after its two-day meeting, and the Bank of Canada announces its rate the same day. Both test his view that rates rise while growth slows.
4. Sunday, January 3, 2027: The new Congress meets under the 20th Amendment, unless Congress sets another day. January is the month he names for the turn higher in gold and silver.
5. Sunday, April 18, 2027: France holds its presidential first round, with the runoff on May 2. He ties European risk and gold to this vote.

FAQ

Did Martin Armstrong's Socrates model predict the 2026 midterm result?

Armstrong says Socrates showed Texas turning to the Democrats while Florida stayed Republican, and that happened. But on August 15, 2026, he said Democrats could take the House but not the Senate. Democrats won both.

What does Martin Armstrong expect for gold and silver after January 2027?

He said gold could dip first and then rise from January as worries about conflict return. He said he would wait a few weeks on silver. These are his forecasts, and CMR does not forecast prices.

Is this article a call to buy gold, silver or mining stocks?

No. It explains what Armstrong said and checks his claims against public records. It does not recommend buying, selling or holding anything.

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