The Genius Who Gave Away Wall Street’s Secrets
By Guest Analyst, Forbes Asia
He built the smartest trading system alive—and gave it away.
A tense silence filled Seoul National University as Joseph Plazo approached the podium—moments before shaking global finance.
Bloomberg reporters scribbled beside AI engineers. Professors sat next to grad students. Everyone leaned in.
He started with a whisper: “Hedge funds would pay millions to bury this.”
And from that moment, he began dismantling financial gatekeeping—one line of AI code at a time.
## The Unlikely Hero of High Finance
You won’t find Joseph Plazo in Wharton yearbooks or JP Morgan memoirs.
His roots? Quezon City, Philippines. His resources? A battered laptop and boundless grit.
“You can’t win a game if no one taught you the rules,” Plazo explained in Singapore.
And the result? An algorithm that felt panic before it showed on the charts.
And when the system worked, he gave it away.
## Stealing Fire—and Lighting the World
He failed 71 times before System 72 emerged.
Version 72 didn’t just analyze—it empathized.
It scanned headlines, tweet sentiment, central bank language, even Reddit sarcasm.
The result? A prediction engine for emotion-fueled markets.
Analysts described it as AI with a gut instinct.
And rather than cash out, he gifted its code—unconditionally.
“Make it better than I did,” he said. “And make sure it stays free.”
## Rewriting the Grammar of Capital
In six months, results surfaced across Asia.
Vietnamese students used it to improve microfinance for rural communities.
In Indonesia, it forecasted island-wide energy needs.
Malaysian teams turned it into an economic safety net for SMEs.
Plazo didn’t just share code—he seeded a mindset.
“The market is a language,” he said in Kyoto. “But we locked the dictionary. I’m unlocking it.”
## Wall Street’s Whisper Campaign
The finance elite were less than thrilled.
“He’s dangerous,” said one anonymous hedge fund exec. “You don’t hand nukes to kids.”
But the more they warned, the more he taught.
“Power hoards,” he said. “Rebellion shares.”
“I’m not handing out cash,” he said. “I’m handing out leverage.”
## The World Tour of Revolution
Since the release, Plazo’s visited campuses, regulators, and classrooms from Manila to Bangkok.
In the Philippines, he brought AI to public school math classes.
In Jakarta, he turned law into empathy.
In Bangkok, he mentored underserved coders for a weekend bootcamp.
“Knowledge compounds when it’s passed on,” he tells every crowd.
## Analogy: The Gutenberg of Capital
A professor compared Plazo to Gutenberg—for financial foresight.
He didn’t lower the barriers. He erased them.
When too few speak the market’s language, economies stay unjust.
“Prediction is power,” he says. “Let’s stop treating it like a secret.”
## Legacy Over Luxury
Plazo still more info runs his billion-dollar firm—but his heart is in the classroom.
His next project blends psychology and prediction into something even more human.
And no, he doesn’t plan to lock it down.
“True wealth is measured by what you enable,” he says.
## Final Note: What Happens When You Hand Over the Code?
He didn’t sell a system. He seeded a future.
Not as theater—but as belief.
They’ll rewrite it.