Batavia Project
Batavia Project seeks to understand a world in motion through data that changes over time. It examines the connections between events and phenomena, exploring what drives change and how its effects travel. With data and engineering as its foundation, it puts that understanding to work in decisions and action, seeking opportunities along the way.
An effort to understand the world
While investing in stocks, founder Sanghyuk Han observed recurring patterns in the flow of trading. Even when he found the movements in order books and charts difficult to put into words, he considered what data could capture them and how they might be explained.
“I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
This widely circulated saying, attributed to Newton, became a challenge for him.[1] Could the mathematics, statistics, computers, and data technology available today explain phenomena that had once been difficult to study? The means to record transactions as they occur, calculate changes over time, and compare many situations have accumulated. The shoulders of the giants on which we stand have grown higher and broader.
Batavia Project aims to show that collective behaviour described as human madness, as well as market changes and the effects of events, can be measured and calculated. It gives this possibility concrete form through data and instruments suited to the phenomena being studied.
Enthusiasm, fear, expectations, and crowding take the form of collective behaviour in markets. Studying this scientifically requires specifying which phenomena are being called madness and defining measurable variables, such as trading frequency, the direction of flows, and the strengthening or weakening of movements. Hypotheses about how collective responses form and reinforce themselves can then be examined against observations, alongside competing interpretations of the same movement.
Calculation makes it possible to assess the magnitude and speed of change, estimate relationships, and compare possible developments through probabilities and scenarios. The results provide a basis for the next decision.
The beginnings of Batavia Project
Sanghyuk Han saw accounting as a language of economics and business, and studied it as a foundation for a broader understanding of the social sciences. His experience includes work on economic statistics and corporate accounting, as well as designing Excel spreadsheets and macros to analyse business data.
Batavia Project began around 2015, while Han was analysing data as he often did. He imagined a “window” of his own making through which he could observe the world from his desk. What if he could use that view to make decisions? His initial interest lay in observing the movements of tradable assets and finding opportunities within them.
While exploring the history of financial markets, he encountered the Dutch East India Company, or VOC, often described as the world’s first publicly traded company.[2] Pooling capital from many investors to operate across distant regions, with shares that could be traded, was an important development in the formation of the modern corporation and capital markets. Following that history led him to the name Batavia.
Batavia was the former name of present-day Jakarta and, from 1619, the site of the VOC’s Asian headquarters.[3] Together with Amsterdam, it formed part of the financial and trading networks linking Europe and Asia, and served as a hub for company and private funds moving between continents.[4] In 1628, the ship Batavia set out on its maiden voyage towards the city of the same name.[5]
Reports and trading books from different regions arrived in Batavia. Accountants consolidated records of inventories, income and expenditure from the various establishments, and compared the goods ordered with those that had actually arrived.[6] The Governor-General and Council reviewed and adjusted requests for funds, goods, ships and personnel. Understanding conditions in distant places informed decisions about allocating resources and running the business.[7]
Ships carried information along the trade routes, ledgers preserved it, and people and organisations performed calculations and made decisions. In this sense, the city of Batavia itself functioned as an information-processing system. It brought together accounts of what was happening in different places, identified connections, and used that understanding to coordinate action across regions.
For Batavia Project, the name Batavia represents bringing together observations of a changing world, understanding them and making decisions. Project expresses the intention to put that idea into practice and continue developing it.
The history behind the name Batavia Project includes developments in finance and trade alongside colonial rule and violence.[3] Within that history, its focus is on the possibilities opened up by capital markets and the activities that connected different parts of the world.
Vector Momentum Algorithm
Sanghyuk Han created Vector Momentum and Rolling Caliper and has continued to develop both concepts. Through observing the dynamics of trading and seeking ways to explain them, he gave each concept concrete form in a system of calculation and measurement.
The Vector Momentum Algorithm began with the idea of detecting and responding in real time to buying and selling pressure evident in trading, before fully interpreting the events and participants’ responses surrounding a price movement. Processing and responding to incoming data in real time was therefore central to the design from the outset.
Vector Momentum describes and measures the movement of tradable items through force, speed, acceleration, instantaneous acceleration, and direction. Alongside rises and falls in price, it considers the pace of trading, changes in that pace, and the direction in which movement develops. Viewing the flows and changes in trading data through the lens of physics provided a starting point for expressing observations as mathematical relationships.
Sanghyuk Han began designing and developing the Vector Momentum Algorithm in spring 2017. He connected to a brokerage’s systems to exchange data and translated the movements observed in order books and charts into values a program could use. This required defining the market observations and calculations corresponding to each concept, and designing the calculation structure and responses. Testing strategies and situations and adjusting parameters gave the algorithm a systematic structure, which he has continued to develop through comparison with actual data.
The Vector Momentum Algorithm measures and responds to upward and downward pressure evident in trading without first having to establish the causes of a price change. This regulates the time capital spends deployed or waiting, improving the efficiency of its use.
Rolling Caliper
Rolling Caliper emerged while the parameters of the Vector Momentum Algorithm were being refined. Applying the same indicators and settings to different charts raised a question: should the measurement criteria remain fixed when the subject being measured changes?
Measurement criteria acquire their meaning from the subject and the conditions in which they are applied. Indicators and settings that were useful in one market need to be reassessed when the pace of trading, the scale of fluctuations, or the structure of movement changes, because keeping the same numerical settings does not necessarily preserve the meaning of the measurement. Continuing to apply settings that worked in the past can mean overlooking changed conditions while believing that the present is being understood.
From this experience, Sanghyuk Han established principles for selecting and adjusting measurement tools and criteria to suit a changing subject. Rolling Caliper applies these principles to assess what has changed in charts, markets, and assets, what needs to be measured, and which indicators and settings are appropriate. It is an instrument: a tool for observation and measurement.
Its scope includes scanning charts and fitting indicators and parameters, reassessing the suitability of measurement criteria as the observation window advances. “Rolling” expresses this attention to the relationship between the subject and its measurement over time.
Retaining a measurement criterion and adjusting it are both outcomes of judgment. Advancing an observation window, updating a calculated value, selecting an indicator, and refitting parameters are treated as distinct tasks, with an understanding of each indicator’s original purpose and calculation structure informing these decisions. This guides the choice of measurements that help make sense of the subject as it is now, and explains the conditions under which the results are meaningful.
Event Transmission
The original idea of a “window” onto the world included an interest in how events connect. Sanghyuk Han has given that ambition to understand connections and change concrete form in the design of Event Transmission.
Event Transmission is an instrument for tracing and measuring where the effects of events and changes travel, along which paths, at what scale, and with what time lags. It distinguishes the event itself from the economic conditions at the time, transmission paths, expected outcomes, actual observations, and their interpretation.
If a major transport route were disrupted, for example, it would examine which raw-material supplies might change, how far inventories and alternative routes might absorb the effects, and which industries’ costs and production might be affected. A single event can lead to multiple paths, whose effects can vary with other events and the economic conditions at the time.
A central feature of the design is to distinguish and compare what was expected at the time with what was subsequently observed. When outcomes differ from expectations, the questions include whether a path was misidentified, conditions changed, or other influences were at work. Recording the reasoning and how events unfolded builds knowledge that can be used when a similar event occurs.
The three instruments have their own questions and uses, having emerged as Batavia Project sought ways to understand observed phenomena and make decisions. Each can be used independently. The data, knowledge, and analytical methods gained in this process are used again in observation and practice, where they can be refined further.
Opening the Journal
The Journal develops questions arising from this observation and inquiry into knowledge readers can understand and use again. It examines what problem an indicator was created to solve, why the effects of an event differ between industries, and which advances in mathematics and technology have made previously difficult phenomena more accessible to explanation.
Each article should answer the question it takes on while also helping readers understand other events and phenomena. The aim is to leave a body of writing readers can return to for context when they encounter new developments, or to reconsider familiar explanations under different conditions.
Sources and record
[1] The quotation uses a widely circulated wording attributed to Newton. In §7 of Newton’s financial misadventures in the South Sea Bubble, revised 16 May 2018, Andrew Odlyzko notes that the earliest known version lacks the reference to the motions of heavenly bodies, which appears to have been added later. This article does not present the wording as a direct statement verified in Newton’s own writings.
[2] “The world’s first publicly traded company” refers here to the VOC’s issue of shares to a broad public in 1602 and the trading of those shares. See the Capital Amsterdam Foundation’s VOC: the start of global share trading. It does not mean that every institution associated with the modern corporation was complete in 1602. On the development of those institutions, see Oscar Gelderblom, Abe de Jong and Joost Jonker, The Formative Years of the Modern Corporation: The Dutch East India Company VOC, 1602–1623, The Journal of Economic History 73(4), 2013, pp. 1050–1076.
[3] Rijksmuseum, The Dutch East India Company (VOC).
[4] The connection between Amsterdam and Batavia refers to the movement of funds and trade between Europe and Asia. See Alberto Feenstra, Requests from the Indies. Asian Agency in the VOC’s Currency Supply to Eighteenth-Century Java, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 63(5–6), 2020, pp. 853–891, especially §3.2.2, pp. 871–872. It describes how bills payable in the Netherlands, purchased with cash in Batavia, connected private remittances with funding for operations in Asia. For the city’s loan and deposit banks and transferable bank certificates, see The Archives of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Local Institutions in Batavia (Jakarta), pp. 81–82. The description in the article synthesises these financial functions.
[5] Western Australian Museum, Batavia’s history, 1628–1963.
[6] Huygens Institute, Introduction to the database Boekhouder-Generaal Batavia. It describes the compilation of consolidated accounts in Batavia from the trading books of the Asian establishments, the comparison of orders with goods received, and the records of inventories, income and expenditure.
[7] Netherlands National Archives, Introduction to the Archives of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, Chapter 1, §§6–7, PDF pp. 14–18. The account of reports, adjustments to requests, transmission of instructions and bookkeeping supports the description here. The city’s role as an information-processing system is an interpretation that brings these functions together.
Draft revised: 5 October 2026 KST · v0.11.