Manila, 2025 — Inside a transparent laboratory on the penthouse level of a digital fortress in Ortigas, scores of machines hum like monks in silent prayer. On the far wall, inlaid in metallic alloy, five words shimmer in the ambient light: “Anticipate. Never react. Always evolve.”
This is the epicenter of Plazo-Sullivan Investments, the investment firm founded by visionary technologist Joseph Plazo — the man behind the AI now known as “System 72.”
With a near-perfect accuracy in stock markets and 95% in copyright, 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 Predicts Emotion Before It Happens
“We don’t just forecast markets,” Plazo says, running his hand across a glowing interface. “We anticipate panic.”
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 Emotional Momentum Mapping — a proprietary framework that processes trillions of data points to pre-empt how people will feel before the market responds.
“It learns from volume surges, 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 follow 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 hot. 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 beat the game — not just with speed, but with empathy.
System 27 was a disaster. System 43 looked promising… until it glitched out 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: Monetize it. File intellectual property rights. Sell it to the highest bidder.
Plazo did the opposite.
“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 cutting-edge 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 predict election outcomes. 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 every industry.”
### The Criticism, The Praise — and the Future
Not everyone’s applauding.
Some traditionalists have condemned the release as “irresponsible,” warning Joseph Plazo that thousands of amateur traders might misuse the tech.
Others whisper darker concerns: That the open-sourced system could lead to automated trading wars in hedge fund ecosystems.
But Plazo isn’t worried.
“We gave the world the printing press. It didn’t end language — it revolutionized it. This is the same.”
For now, his firm continues to manage billions. But Plazo himself is stepping back from profit.
“I’m not building wealth anymore,” he says. “I’m building something bigger. There’s a difference.”
### What Comes After Godmode?
As we leave the lab, the machines drone like monks. Outside, Manila traffic snarls — alive, unpredictable, human.
And yet somewhere, a piece of Plazo’s code is already watching, learning, forecasting the next move 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 gave away the keys.