Measuring & Managing Market Risk Flashcards
What is market risk?
- risk that arises from market movements (eg. Stock prices, interest rates, and etc.)
What is risk management?
- risk management: process of identifying and measuring risk and ensuring risk taken is in line with desired risk
What does 5% VaR of a portfolio is $2.2 Million over a one day period mean?
- 5% of the time losses would be at least $2.2 million
What percentage of VaR is equivalent to a 1 standard deviation move, 2.33 standard deviation move, and 1.65 standard deviation move?
- 1 standard deviation movement is equal to 16% VaR (below the mean)
- 2.33 standard deviation movement (below the mean) is equal to 1% VaR
- 1.65 standard deviation movement (below the mean) is equal to 5% VaR
What are 2 statements regarding VaR?
- VaR doesn’t not give a likelihood for losing a specific amount
- VaR is not expected loss it’s a minimum loss
What is Value at Risk (VaR)?
- minimum loss expected a certain percentage of time over a given time period
What are the 3 methods to estimate VaR?
- parametric method
- historical simulation method
- Monte Carlo simulation method
Regardless of the VaR method used what are three key steps in the estimation procedure?
- define risk factors with risk decomposition (factors such as equity risk, currency risk, etc.)
- gather historical data for each risk factor
- use data to estimate VaR using a preferred methodology
What are 2 other different names for the parametric method of VaR?
- analytical method
- variance - covariance
How can a normally distributed return be converted to a Z-distribution?
z = (R- U)/ O
R = return
M = mean
O = standard deviation
What is the formula for expected return of 2 assets in a portfolio?
E (Rp) = W1* R1 + W2* R2
What is the formula for standard deviation of a 2 asset portfolio?
O = sqrt ((W1^2* O1^2 + W2^2* O2^2) + (2 * W1 * W2 * P* O1 * O2)
W1 = weight of asset 1
O1 = standard deviation of asset 1
W2 = weight of asset 2
O2 = standard deviation of asset 2
P = correlation coefficient of asset 1 & 2
What is the formula for VaR under the parametric method?
(ERp - 1.65*Op) (-1) * portfolio value
ERp = expected return of portfolio
1.65 = standard deviation equivalent of VaR (eg. if VaR is 1% standard deviation would be 2.33 instead of 1.65)
Op = standard deviation of portfolio
How would you calculate VaR using the historical method?
- gather historical data and organize largest loss to largest gain
- if you want 5% VaR then you would find the bottom 5th percentile out of all the data
What is the Monte Carlo simulation method of VaR?
- Monte Carlo simulation method generates millions of random values or returns, then you use the historical simulation method to determine VaR (the historical method puts returns in largest loss to largest gain then you find the percentile)
What is conditional VaR?
- expected loss if VaR is exceeded (if returns are worse then expected then average returns of the worst losses would be conditional VaR)