Sorry, AI Still Won’t See a Market Crash

Sorry, AI Still Won’t See a Market Crash

Blog Article

Joseph Plazo just reminded a room full of Asia’s brightest something Wall Street has been avoiding for years: AI may be powerful, but it lacks wisdom.

MANILA — Plazo didn’t come to praise AI. He came to shake people up.

On a sweltering Thursday morning at the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, Plazo stood before a sea of students from top Asian universities—NUS—ready for a sermon on AI’s glory in finance.

What they got instead? A jolt of truth.

“AI is like your smartest intern,” Plazo noted, “But you still don’t give the intern the keys to your vault.”

The room laughed. Then they stilled. Because he was dead serious.

### The Flaw in the Code: No Judgment

Let’s be clear—Plazo isn’t some Luddite clinging to the past. He designs trading AIs. His firm, Plazo Sullivan Roche Capital, runs some of the most accurate systems on global markets. He understands machine learning like few do.

But that’s why his warning felt urgent.

“The problem isn’t AI,” he told the room. “The problem is us. We keep believing it’ll save us from making hard decisions. That’s not its job.”

Plazo unpacked real-world case studies—moments when AI signaled winning trades… just ahead of a central bank pivot or an unexpected war. Moments no dataset could foresee.

### Even The Bold Questions Got Burned

A student from Kyoto asked if LLMs might someday gauge global sentiment.

Plazo grinned.

“AI can spot a tweetstorm. But it won’t sense dread in a press conference. It won’t catch regret in a central banker’s sigh.”

The room exhaled. Message received.

Another asked, “Can AI ever understand conviction?”

Plazo raised an eyebrow.

“Conviction isn’t math. It’s instinct. It’s forged by failure and memory. You can’t download that.”

### Plazo’s Words = Financial Therapy

This wasn’t about flash trading or chatbots. It was about ethics.

Students admitted they saw AI as a cheat code—an escape hatch from risk, from thinking too hard. Plazo tore that idea down.

“You can automate your trades. You can’t automate your integrity.”

That line echoed. Because everyone in that room—from the copyright cowboys to the quant whizzes—wanted alpha. But not at the cost of why they started.

### So What’s AI Good For?

Plazo didn’t trash AI. He credited its strengths:

- It filters noise.
- It backtests at scale.
- It detects technical setups better than any human.

But it can’t read sarcasm. It won’t grasp when a politician is bluffing. And it doesn’t know if your retirement burns.

“If your AI bot makes a bad call,” Plazo asked, “do you still take the loss? Or do you hide behind the code?”

That’s leadership talking.

### This Isn’t Just Markets—It’s Mindset

Plazo wasn’t preaching finance. He was preaching self-leadership. Use AI—but don’t worship it. Let it assist—not decide.

And yes—he still believes in the machines. He’s building tools that track geopolitics, misinformation, even psychological nuance.

But he left no doubt:

“No machine can tell you when *not* to act. That’s click here your job.”

### Don’t Let Your Bot Decide Who You Are

As the crowd filed out—buzzing, challenged, changed—one phrase echoed down the halls:

“AI doesn’t know your values. So don’t let it make your decisions.”

In a world chasing speed, Plazo offered something rarer:

A pause.

Because investing isn’t just about *winning*. It’s about knowing **why** you played.