The Genius Who Gave Away Wall Street’s Secrets
The Genius Who Gave Away Wall Street’s Secrets
Blog Article
By By the Forbes Editorial Team
He conquered Wall Street’s edge—and handed it to students.
Seoul, South Korea — At Seoul National University, a full house of professors, students, and analysts awaited Joseph Plazo’s keynote.
The audience was electric—hedge fund analysts beside machine learning prodigies.
Plazo leaned into the mic and said: “What I’m about to teach you—hedge funds would kill to keep hidden.”
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.
He came from the streets of Quezon City—with a secondhand laptop and relentless focus.
“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
System 72 wasn’t born overnight. It was sculpted through sleepless decades.
Version 72 didn’t just analyze—it empathized.
It scanned headlines, tweet sentiment, central bank language, even Reddit sarcasm.
It became a radar for volatility and opportunity hidden beneath chaos.
One fund manager called it “a weather radar for investor fear.”
And rather than cash out, he gifted its code—unconditionally.
“I built it. You evolve it,” he told the world’s leading academic institutions.
## Rewriting the Grammar of Capital
Six months later, classrooms became innovation labs.
In Vietnam, students used the model to optimize farm lending systems.
Indonesian engineers used it to balance energy demand across scattered regions.
Kuala Lumpur students used it to shield businesses from forex swings.
This wasn’t open-source software. It was more info an open-source *philosophy*.
“Prediction shouldn’t be elite,” he told Kyoto students. “It should be public literacy.”
## 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.”
“This is power redistribution, not philanthropy,” Plazo said.
## The World Tour of Revolution
Since the release, Plazo’s visited campuses, regulators, and classrooms from Manila to Bangkok.
In Manila, he simplified complexity—for 10th graders.
In Jakarta, he helped draft ethical AI guidelines with regulators.
In Thailand, he built hope in three days with laptops and questions.
“The future isn’t built in vaults,” he says. “It’s built in classrooms.”
## Analogy: The Gutenberg of Capital
One AI ethicist in Tokyo called System 72 “the printing press of predictive wealth.”
It flattened what was once a vertical economy of advantage.
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 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.