Value-at-Risk for long and short trading positions: The case of the Athens Stock Exchange (original) (raw)

Value-at-risk for long and short trading positions: Evidence from developed and emerging equity markets

International Review of Financial Analysis, 2011

The financial crisis of 2007-2009 has questioned the provisions of Basel II agreement on capital adequacy requirements and the appropriateness of VaR measurement. This paper reconsiders the use of Value-at-Risk as a measure for potential risk of economic losses in financial markets by estimating VaR for daily stock returns with the application of various parametric univariate models that belong to the class of ARCH models which are based on the skewed Student distribution. We use daily data for three groups of stock market indices, namely Developed, Southeast Asia and Latin America. The data covers the period 1987-2009. We conduct our analysis with the adoption of the methodology suggested by Giot and Laurent (2003). Therefore, we estimate an APARCH model based on the skewed Student distribution to fully take into account the fat left and right tails of the returns distribution. The main finding of our analysis is that the skewed Student APARCH improves considerably the forecasts of one-day-ahead VaR for long and short trading positions. Additionally, we evaluate the performance of each model with the calculation of Kupie"s (1995) Likelihood Ratio test on the empirical failure test. Moreover, for the case of the skewed Student APARCH model we compute the expected shortfall and the average multiple of tail event to risk measure. These two measures help us to further assess the information we obtained from the estimation of the empirical failure rates.

The role of distribution and volatility specification in value at risk estimation: Evidence from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange

Journal of Economic and Financial Sciences, 2012

Given the volatile nature of global financial markets, managing as well as predicting financial risk plays an increasingly important role in banking and finance. The Value at Risk (VaR) measure has emerged as the most prominent measure of downside market risk. It is measured as the alpha quantile of the profit and loss distribution. Recently a number of distributions have been proposed to model VaR: these include the extreme value theory distributions (EVT), Generalized Error Distribution (GED), Student’s t, and normal distribution. Furthermore, asymmetric as well as symmetric volatility models are combined with these distributions for out-sample VaR forecasts. This paper assesses the role of the distribution assumption and volatility specification in the accuracy of VaR estimates using daily closing prices of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange All Share Index (JSE ALSI). It is found that Student’s t distribution combined with asymmetric volatility models produces VaR estimates in out-...

Estimation of Value at Risk (VaR) Based On Lévy-GARCH Models: Evidence from Tehran Stock Exchange

Journal of Money and Economy, 2021

Risk (VaR) using GARCH type models with improved return distribution. Value at Risk (VaR) is an essential benchmark for measuring the risk of financial markets quantitatively. The parametric method, historical simulation, and Monte Carlo simulation have been proposed in several financial mathematics and engineering studies to calculate VaR, that each of them has some limitations. Therefore, these methods are not recommended in the case of complications in financial modeling since they require considering a series of assumptions, such as symmetric distributions in return on assets. Because the stock exchange data in the present study are skewed, asymmetric distributions along with symmetric distributions have been used for estimating VaR in this study. In this paper, the performance of fifteen VaR models with a compound of three conditional volatility characteristics including GARCH, APARCH and GJR and five distributional assumptions (normal, Student's t, skewed Student's t and two different Lévy distributions, include normal-inverse Gaussian (NIG) and generalized hyperbolic (GHyp)) for return innovations are investigated in the chemical, base metals, automobile, and cement industries. To do so, daily data from of Tehran Stock Exchange are used from 2013 to 2020. The results show that the GJR model with NIG distribution is more accurate than other models. According to the industry index loss function, the highest and lowest risks are related to the automotive and cement industries.

Parametric Value-at-Risk analysis: Evidence from stock indices

The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 2012

We evaluate the performance of several volatility models in estimating one-day-ahead Value-at-Risk (VaR) of seven stock market indices using a number of distributional assumptions. Because all returns series exhibit volatility clustering and long range memory, we examine GARCH-type models including fractionary integrated models under normal, Student-t and skewed Student-t distributions. Consistent with the idea that the accuracy of VaR estimates is sensitive to the adequacy of the volatility model used, we find that AR (1)-FIAPARCH (1,d,1) model, under a skewed Student-t distribution, outperforms all the models that we have considered including widely used ones such as GARCH (1,1) or HYGARCH (1,d,1). The superior performance of the skewed Student-t FIAPARCH model holds for all stock market indices, and for both long and short trading positions. Our findings can be explained by the fact that the skewed Student-t FIAPARCH model can jointly accounts for the salient features of financial time series: fat tails, asymmetry, volatility clustering and long memory. In the same vein, because it fails to account for most of these stylized facts, the RiskMetrics model provides the least accurate VaR estimation. Our results corroborate the calls for the use of more realistic assumptions in financial modeling.

A Detailed Comparison of Value at Risk in International Stock Exchanges

2003

This work investigates the performance of different models of Value at Risk (VaR). We include a wider range of methods (Parametric, Historical simulation, Monte Carlo simulation, and Extreme value theory models) and several models to compute the conditional variance (exponential moving averages, GARCH and asymmetric GARCH models) under Normal and Student's t-distribution of returns. We analyse four European indexes (IBEX-35, CAC40, DAX and FTSE100), the American Dow Jones and S&P 500 indexes, the Japanese Nikkei 225 index and the Hong Kong Hang Seng index. We examine two periods: a stable period and a volatile one. To choose the best model, we employ a two-stage selection approach. First, we test the accuracy of different models of VaR. We use the unconditional and conditional coverage test, the Back-Testing criterion and the dynamic quantile test. A model survived if all tests indicated the model is accurate. With regard to the first stage, the best models are Parametric and Extreme value theory methods, when they use asymmetric and nonasymmetric GARCH models under Student's t-distribution of returns. Second, we evaluate the loss function of these models. We use several non-parametric tests to test the superiority of a VaR model in terms of the loss function. The result of the second stage indicates that the best model is a Parametric model with conditional variance estimated by asymmetric GARCH model under Student's t-distribution of returns. Nowadays the Parametric models are not as popular because some authors argue that the most conventional parametric specifications have failed in capturing some rare events. However, this paper shows that these models can obtain successful VaR measures if conditional variance is estimated with a GARCH model to capture the characteristic of the returns. This model is usually an exponential GARCH under Student's t-distribution of returns. JEL: G32, G11, C52.

VaR Analysis for the Shanghai Stock Market

ipcsit.com

In this paper we investigated the relevance of the skewed Student's t distribution innovation in capturing long-memory and asymmetry features in the volatility of Shanghai stock markets. We also examined the performance of in-sample and out-of-sample value-at-risk (VaR) analyses using the FIAPARCH model with the normal, Student's t, and skewed Student's t distribution innovations. We found that risk managers and portfolio investors can estimate VaR and optimal margin levels most accurately by using the skewed Student's t FIAPARCH VaR models of long and short trading positions in the Shanghai stock market.

Alternative statistical distributions for estimating value-at-risk: theory and evidence

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, 2011

A number of applications presume that asset returns are normally distributed, even though they are widely known to be skewed leptokurtic and fat-tailed and excess kurtosis. This leads to the underestimation or overestimation of the true value-at-risk (VaR). This study utilizes a composite trapezoid rule, a numerical integral method, for estimating quantiles on the skewed generalized t distribution (SGT) which permits returns innovation to flexibly treat skewness, leptokurtosis and fat tails. Daily spot prices of the thirteen stock indices in North America, Europe and Asia provide data for examining the one-day-ahead VaR forecasting performance of the GARCH model with normal, student's t and SGT distributions. Empirical results indicate that the SGT provides a good fit to the empirical distribution of the log-returns followed by student's t and normal distributions. Moreover, for all confidence levels, all models tend to underestimate real market risk. Furthermore, the GARCH-based model, with SGT distributional setting, generates the most conservative VaR forecasts followed by student's t and normal distributions for a long position. Consequently, it appears reasonable to conclude that, from the viewpoint of accuracy, the influence of both skewness and fat-tails effects (SGT) is more important than only the effect of fat-tails (student's t) on VaR estimates in stock markets for a long position.

Modeling risk for long and short trading positions

The Journal of Risk Finance, 2005

The accuracy of parametric, non-parametric and semi-parametric methods in predicting the one-day-ahead Value-at-Risk (VaR) of perfectly diversified portfolios in three types of markets (stock exchanges, commodities and exchange rates) is investigated, both for long and short trading positions. The risk management techniques are designed to capture the main characteristics of asset returns, such as leptokurtosis and asymmetric distribution, volatility clustering, asymmetric relationship between stock returns and conditional variance and power transformation of conditional variance. Based on backtesting measures and a loss function evaluation method, we find out that the modeling of the main characteristics of asset returns produces accurate VaR forecasts.

Evaluating the performance of the skewed distributions to forecast value-at-risk in the global financial crisis

The Journal of Risk, 2016

This paper evaluates the performance of several skewed and symmetric distributions in modeling the tail behavior of daily returns and forecasting Value at Risk (VaR). First, we used some goodness of fit tests to analyze which distribution best fits the data. The comparisons in terms of VaR have been carried out examining the accuracy of the VaR estimate and minimizing the loss function from the point of view of the regulator and the firm. The results show that the skewed distributions outperform the normal and Student-t (ST) distribution in fitting portfolio returns. Following a two-stage selection process, whereby we initially ensure that the distributions provide accurate VaR estimates and then, focusing on the firm´s loss function, we can conclude that skewed distributions outperform the normal and ST distribution in forecasting VaR. From the point of view of the regulator, the superiority of the skewed distributions related to ST is not so evident. As the firms are free to choose the VaR model they use to forecast VaR, in practice, skewed distributions will be more frequently used.

A Comparative Performance of Conventional Methods for Estimating Market Risk Using Value at Risk

This paper presents a comparative evaluation of the predictive performance of conventional univariate VaR models including unconditional normal distribution model, exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA/RiskMetrics), Historical Simulation, Filtered Historical Simulation, GARCH-normal and GARCH Students t models in terms of their forecasting accuracy. The paper empirically determines the extent to which the aforementioned methods are reliable in estimating one-day ahead Value at Risk (VaR). The analysis is based on daily closing prices of the USD/KES exchange rates over the period starting January 03, 2003 to December 31, 2016. In order to assess the performance of the models, the rolling window of approximately four years (n=1000 days) is used for backtesting purposes. The backtesting analysis covers the sub-period from November 2008 to December 2016, consequently including the most volatile periods of the Kenyan shilling and the historical all-time high in September 2015. The empirical results demonstrate that GJR-GARCH-t approach and Filtered Historical Simulation method with GARCH volatility specification perform competitively accurate in estimating VaR forecasts for both standard and more extreme quantiles thereby generally out-performing all the other models under consideration.