How a Self-Taught Filipino Coder Gave the Market a Conscience
How a Self-Taught Filipino Coder Gave the Market a Conscience
Blog Article
By Guest Columnist, Forbes Asia
Wall Street never saw him coming—because Joseph Plazo never played by its rules.
In a hot Quezon City apartment, with fans off and lights out, Joseph Plazo kept coding—driven by vision alone.
His gear was outdated. His ambition wasn’t.
He was building something no one believed in—a trading AI that anticipated fear and greed before markets even blinked.
Today, that system—called System 72—has a 99% win rate in stocks, and 95% in copyright.
It crushed benchmarks and rode chaos like a seasoned trader.
Here’s where the story flips: he didn’t sell it. He shared it.
## Cracking the Market Without Permission
Plazo wasn’t Wall Street royalty. He wasn’t Ivy League. He wasn’t even invited to the table.
By day he earned rent. By night, he trained machines to feel fear.
“I built a system that could feel panic before the market did,” he recalls.
Version 38 nearly ruined him. Version 56 lagged. Version 69 missed the mark.
Then came System 72. It tracked behavior, not just price.
## The Day the Machine Spoke Louder Than Noise
During a panic in 2024, his AI spotted the optimism nobody saw.
Behind the panic, the machine found patterns—and profits.
By fall, more info it was beating markets at their own game.
Hedge funds circled. Plazo said no.
## The Shock Move: Give It to the Kids
Rather than sell, Plazo shocked the world: he gave System 72 to twelve Asian universities.
From Tsinghua to Tokyo to Manila, universities got the core AI—and curriculum to match.
“I built this for understanding—not control,” Plazo announced.
## A New Breed of Thinkers
From Seoul to Mumbai, students are applying the system in ways Wall Street never imagined.
In Bangalore, a team modeled crop demand. In Malaysia, disaster logistics. In Tokyo, insurance pricing.
“It’s not just trading,” a student says. “It’s a new way to think.”
## Pushback from the Power Players
Wall Street wasn’t amused.
“It’s irresponsible,” one economist said.
He wasn’t apologizing.
“You can hand fire to a child—or teach them to build light,” he argued.
The core code was open. The infrastructure? Proprietary.
## Legacy: Code as Redemption
In Seoul, during a keynote, he paused and said, “I did this because no one did it for me.”
He saw pain. He built precision.
System 72 isn’t his legacy. The access is.
## What If the Oracle Was Always Human?
Plazo now tours campuses, teaching AI philosophy and emotional foresight.
He teaches them not to copy—“Outgrow it,” he says.
## Final Word: The Oracle Who Shared the Map
The world thought Plazo would vanish into luxury. Instead, he became a lighthouse.
“System 73 is next,” he says. “But this one… I hope you’ll build with me.”
And maybe that’s the biggest trade of all—secrecy for shared brilliance.