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.
Drawing on data from Plazo Sullivan Roche Capital, he showed that algorithms now dominate more than 80% of global market volume, rendering human decision-making largely ceremonial.
The Silent Extinction of Manual Trading
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 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.
5. The TEDx Message That Hit Hard
As Joseph Plazo concluded, he left the crowd here 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 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.