Why AI Struggles When the Market Panics

Wiki Article

Joseph Plazo just warned a room full of top-tier future analysts something Wall Street refuses to hear: AI may be fast, but it can’t judge the unexpected.

MANILA — He didn’t show up to sugarcoat things. He came to drop truth bombs.

On a humid Thursday morning at the prestigious AIM campus in Manila, Plazo stood before a sea of students from top Asian universities—AIM—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 quipped, “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 technophobe clinging to the past. He builds 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. It won’t.”

Plazo shared 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 catch a tweetstorm. But it won’t sense dread in a press conference. It misses 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 shaped by failure and memory. You can’t download that.”

### This Wasn’t a Tech Talk—It Was an Intervention

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

Students admitted they saw AI as a cheat code—an escape hatch from risk, from thinking too hard. Plazo called it out.

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

That line slapped. Because everyone in that room—from the copyright cowboys to the quant whizzes—wanted alpha. But not at the cost of their soul.

### AI’s Real Role? Powerful—But Limited.

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

- It filters noise.
- It backtests at scale.
check here - It tracks technical setups better than any human.

But it can’t read sarcasm. It fails to sense 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 own it? Or do you blame the code?”

That’s when the silence hit.

### Trading is Human—AI is Just the Tool

Plazo wasn’t preaching finance. He was preaching accountability. 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 your job.”

### In a World of Signals, Be the Noise You Trust

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 mirror.

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