Joseph Plazo opened his TEDx speech not with optimism, but with a quiet bombshell: “If you think humans trade the markets today… you’re ten years late to the truth.” The crowd froze.
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
Plazo began by describing how, a decade ago, traders still stood behind screens and made real-time decisions. Today, he noted, those decisions have been delegated to algorithms designed to operate thousands of times faster.
The Institutional Motive Behind Automation
Plazo made it clear: hedge funds replaced humans not because humans were wrong—but because humans were slow.
From Simple Bots to Market-Shaping Systems
Plazo highlighted how algorithms evolved from simple automated tools into entire ecosystems capable of liquidity discovery, sentiment analysis, arbitrage, and predictive modeling.
4. Retail Traders Are Competing With Supercomputers
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.
5. The TEDx Message That Hit Hard
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 it will be crushed by it.”
His TEDx talk didn’t just read more 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.