Ortigas, 2025 — Inside a crystalline laboratory on the uppermost floor of a skyscraper in Ortigas, dozens of machines hum like monks in wordless communion. On the far wall, inlaid in metallic alloy, five words shimmer in the ambient light: “Anticipate. Never react. Always evolve.”
This is the command center of Plazo-Sullivan Investments, the investment firm founded by AI maverick Joseph Plazo — the man behind the AI now known as “System 72.”
With a near-perfect accuracy in stock markets and 95% success in digital assets, Plazo’s fully autonomous trading system isn’t just redefining investment norms — it’s upending our very understanding of intelligence, strategy, and risk.
But perhaps more shocking than the numbers is what he did in response.
He made it public.
### The Algorithm That Feels Fear Before It Happens
“We don’t just spot patterns,” Plazo says, grazing his fingers across a glowing interface. “We predict fear.”
System 72, the latest in a series of dozens of prototypes over 12 years, is not just a souped-up quant model. It’s a sentient neural lattice with what Plazo calls Emotion-Driven Analytics — a proprietary framework that analyzes trillions of data points to pre-empt how people will feel before the market reacts.
“It learns from liquidity spikes, sentiment anomalies, subtle language cues on Twitter, and macroeconomic dissonance — then models mass human reaction simultaneously,” he explains.
The result? A system that doesn’t respond to the market. It moves before it like a ghost ahead of time.
### From Brownouts to Billionaire
A decade ago, Plazo was training AI models by candlelight in a studio flat in Quezon City. Blackouts were common. The air was sticky. The code was barebones.
“I didn’t have Bloomberg terminals or GPU farms. Just a cracked laptop, textbooks, and relentless drive,” he says, laughing.
He had just quit a well-paying executive job, betting his future on a dream to build a system that could decode human financial behavior — not just with speed, but with empathy.
System 27 was a disaster. System 43 looked promising… until it failed catastrophically during a flash crash. But he kept building. Kept refining.
By System 71, the wins were stacking. With 72, it became revolutionary.
“I cried when I saw the simulation complete. Not because I was rich. But because… it worked. Finally.”
### The Decision That Stunned Wall Street
When the board of his company reviewed System 72’s results, the reaction was predictable: Protect it. Patent it. Sell it to the highest bidder.
Plazo did the unthinkable.
“I released the source code to twelve top Asian universities,” he says. “No cost. No hedge fund gatekeeping. Just code, curiosity, and courage.”
His reason?
“I’ve seen too many people crushed by financial systems they don’t understand,” he says, pausing. “My father was one of them. A smart man. Honest. But one bad investment took it all.”
Plazo’s voice fades, the room suddenly heavy. “If he had this system, he wouldn’t have lost the house.”
That pain, he says, became the motive force. The drive. The mission.
### Teaching the World to Win
Plazo has since launched a worldwide educational initiative, speaking at institutions from Japan’s top universities to the National University of Singapore. He lectures beside machine learning professors who now teach his framework to instruct students in behavioral modeling.
“Plazo’s Emotional Momentum framework is the pioneering form of behavioral AI applied to finance today,” says Dr. Hana Kim, a lead AI researcher at SeoulTech. “It doesn’t just see markets — it understands emotion.”
Students are creating applications using the tech. One PhD student in Bangalore used a modified version to predict election outcomes. Another group in Taiwan adapted it for supply chain modeling.
“Once you understand how fear shapes behavior,” Plazo says, “you can apply it to every industry.”
### The Criticism, The Praise — and the Future
Not everyone’s applauding.
Some traditionalists have slammed the release as “reckless,” warning that thousands of amateur traders might misuse the tech.
Others whisper darker concerns: That the open-sourced system could lead to unregulated market chaos in high-frequency trading.
But Plazo isn’t worried.
“We gave the world the printing press. It didn’t end language — it multiplied it. This is the same.”
For now, his firm continues to manage an empire. But Plazo himself is stepping back from profit.
“I’m not building wealth anymore,” he says. “I’m building lasting impact. There’s a difference.”
### What Comes After Godmode?
As we leave the lab, the machines drone like monks. Outside, Manila traffic crawls — chaotic, unpredictable, human.
And yet somewhere, a piece of Plazo’s code is already watching, learning, sensing here the ripple before it happens.
He turns back for a moment and says, “I didn’t build a system to trade stocks. I built a system to decode fear.”
In a world where uncertainty is the only constant, Joseph Plazo didn’t just create a cheat code.
He shared the power.