When Joseph Plazo stepped onto the TEDx stage, the audience expected another polished talk about markets and innovation. What they got instead was a startling revelation: human traders haven’t been driving price action for a decade—algorithms have.
Speaking through the lens of Plazo Sullivan Roche Capital, Plazo revealed that institutions quietly rewrote their execution protocols between 2013 and 2023, enabling machines to replace humans at every critical touchpoint.
1. The Death of the Trading Floor
He pointed out that while humans still “monitor,” algorithms now act.
2. Why Institutions Chose Algorithms
He summed it up elegantly: “Institutions don’t trust humans to protect capital. They trust math.”
3. The Rise of Algorithmic Ecosystems
Plazo told the audience that algorithms no longer follow the market—they shape it.
Why Most Humans Are Trading Against Machines
Plazo didn’t sugarcoat it. Retail traders today unknowingly compete with AI-enhanced supercomputers that see liquidity, volume, and structure at a depth no human can.
What the Audience Never Expected
As Joseph Plazo concluded, he left the crowd with a message that resonated long after the applause faded:
“Human intuition isn’t dead. But in today’s markets, intuition must be paired with algorithmic understanding—or more info it will be crushed by it.”
His TEDx talk didn’t just explain the last decade of change—it armed the public with the truth behind modern trading.
And for many, it was the wake-up call they never saw coming.