Manila, 2025 — Inside a transparent laboratory on the penthouse level of a digital fortress in Ortigas, scores of machines hum like monks in wordless communion. On the far wall, inlaid in burnished chrome, 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 model of intelligence, strategy, and risk.
But perhaps more shocking than the numbers is what he did afterwards.
He gave it away.
### The Algorithm That Predicts Emotion Before It Happens
“We don’t just predict trends,” Plazo says, swiping gently across a glowing interface. “We sense human volatility.”
System 72, the latest in a series of 72 experimental builds over 12 years, is not just a supercharged algorithm. It’s a recursive deep learning engine with what Plazo calls Psychometric Market Modeling — a proprietary framework that analyzes trillions of data points to feel 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 shadow before sunrise.
### From Brownouts to Billionaire
A decade ago, Plazo was training AI models by candlelight in a small apartment in Quezon City. Blackouts were common. The air was hot. The code was primitive.
“I didn’t have Bloomberg terminals or GPU farms. Just a secondhand computer, textbooks, and stubborn grit,” he says, laughing.
He had just walked away from six figures, betting his future on a dream to build a system that could out-think the market — not just with speed, but with soul.
System 27 lost him half his savings. System 43 looked promising… until it imploded during a flash crash. But he kept building. Kept refining.
By System 71, the wins were impossible to ignore. With 72, it became undeniable.
“I cried when I saw the simulation complete. Not because I was rich. But because… it worked. At last.”
### The Decision That Stunned Wall Street
When the board of his company reviewed System 72’s results, the reaction was predictable: Protect it. Keep it secret. Sell it to the highest bidder.
Plazo did the unprecedented.
“I released the source code to twelve top Asian universities,” he says. “No paywall. No hedge fund gatekeeping. Just code, curiosity, and courage.”
His reason?
“I’ve seen too many people burned by the markets they don’t understand,” he says, pausing. “My father was one of them. A smart man. Honest. But one read more bad investment destroyed our home.”
Plazo’s voice drops, the room suddenly heavy. “If he had this system, he wouldn’t have gone bankrupt.”
That pain, he says, became the spark. 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 top academic 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 forecast political swings. Another group in Taiwan adapted it for retail demand forecasting.
“Once you understand how fear moves across networks,” Plazo says, “you can apply it to any domain.”
### The Criticism, The Praise — and the Future
Not everyone’s applauding.
Some traditionalists have condemned the release as “dangerous,” warning that thousands of semi-trained investors might misuse the tech.
Others whisper darker concerns: That the open-sourced system could lead to AI arms races in algorithmic finance.
But Plazo isn’t worried.
“We gave the world the printing press. It didn’t end language — it democratized it. This is the same.”
For now, his firm continues to manage a global portfolio. But Plazo himself is moving into mentorship and research.
“I’m not building wealth anymore,” he says. “I’m building legacy. There’s a difference.”
### What Comes After Godmode?
As we leave the lab, the machines continue to hum. Outside, Manila traffic crawls — organic, unpredictable, human.
And yet somewhere, a piece of Plazo’s code is already calculating, learning, sensing 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 protect the vulnerable.”
In a world where uncertainty is the only constant, Joseph Plazo didn’t just create a cheat code.
He shared the power.