VAR: risk mitigant or amplifier?

Value-at-risk is a far-from-perfect risk measure. Jon Danielsson, Ulrich Klueh and Laura Kodres take a close look at the lessons to be learnt from its use in stressful or volatile periods, such as the current financial crisis

The current financial market crisis has elicited accusations that mechanistic adherence to risk management systems, such as value-at-risk (VAR) market risk measures, may have been a contributing factor. The model in the box opposite explores how, in combination with desired capital levels, risk management techniques - including VAR-type techniques - can lead to destabilising asset price behaviour in certain circumstances.

It is true that VAR-type techniques can help risk managers judge and

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The new rules of market risk management

Amid 2020’s Covid-19-related market turmoil – with volatility and value-at-risk (VAR) measures soaring – some of the world’s largest investment banks took advantage of the extraordinary conditions to notch up record trading revenues. In a recent Risk.net…

ETF strategies to manage market volatility

Money managers and institutional investors are re-evaluating investment strategies in the face of rapidly shifting market conditions. Consequently, selective genres of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are seeing robust growth in assets. Hong Kong Exchanges…

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