Ortigas, 2025 — Inside a glass-walled laboratory on the 16th floor of a digital fortress in Ortigas, a network of machines purr like monks in silent prayer. On the far wall, etched in burnished chrome, five words shimmer in the ambient light: “Anticipate. Never react. Always evolve.”
This is the nerve hub of PSR Capital, the investment firm founded by 41-year-old polymath Joseph Plazo — the man behind the AI now known as “System 72.”
With a staggering predictive success in stock markets and unprecedented performance in copyright, Plazo’s self-governing AI engine isn’t just rewriting the rules of finance — it’s reframing our very perception of intelligence, strategy, and risk.
But perhaps more shocking than the numbers is what he did next.
He released it to the world.
### The Algorithm That Senses Panic Before It Happens
“We don’t just predict trends,” Plazo says, grazing his fingers across a glowing interface. “We predict fear.”
System 72, the latest in a series of successive iterations 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 simulates thousands of investor psyches simultaneously,” he explains.
The result? A system that doesn’t respond to the market. It walks ahead of it like a ghost ahead of time.
### From Brownouts to Billionaire
A decade ago, Plazo was building neural nets by candlelight in a studio flat in Quezon City. Power outages were routine. The air was sticky. The code was clunky.
“I didn’t have Bloomberg terminals or GPU farms. Just a cracked laptop, textbooks, and relentless drive,” he says, laughing.
He had just left a cushy corporate gig, betting his future on a dream to build a system that could decode human financial behavior — not just with speed, but with emotional acuity.
System 27 nearly broke him. System 43 looked promising… until it failed catastrophically during a flash crash. But he kept building. Kept refining.
By System 71, the wins were stacking. 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. Patent it. Sell it to the highest bidder.
Plazo did the unthinkable.
“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 burned by the markets they don’t understand,” he says, pausing. “My father was one of them. A smart man. Honest. But one 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 fuel. The purpose.
### Teaching the World to Win
Plazo has since launched a cross-border speaking circuit, speaking at institutions from Kyoto University 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 lead AI researcher at SeoulTech. “It doesn’t just analyze numbers — it anticipates behavior.”
Students are building startups using the tech. One PhD student in Bangalore used a modified version to model voter behavior. Another group in Taiwan adapted it for consumer behavior prediction.
“Once you understand how fear flows through data,” Plazo says, get more info “you can apply it to almost anything.”
### The Criticism, The Praise — and the Future
Not everyone’s applauding.
Some traditionalists have criticized the release as “reckless,” warning that thousands of unprepared users 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 simmers — organic, unpredictable, human.
And yet somewhere, a piece of Plazo’s code is already calculating, learning, plotting the next step 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 handed the joystick to the world.