Question

5) Please discuss the logic behind using VaR to determine the risk position of financial institutions. How do we go about calculating a companies particular level of VaR? What is the difference between 95% and 99% Var. What are some of the shortcomings of the model?

Answer 1

Value at Risk (VaR)

Value at Risk (VaR) is a financial metric that estimates the risk of an investment. More specifically, VaR is a statistical technique used to measure the amount of potential loss that could happen in an investment portfolio over a specified period of time. Value at Risk gives the probability of losing more than a given amount in a given portfolio.

The reason for assuming normal markets and no trading, and to restricting loss to things measured in daily accounts, is to make the loss observable. In some extreme financial events it can be impossible to determine losses, either because market prices are unavailable or because the loss-bearing institution breaks up. Some longer-term consequences of disasters, such as lawsuits, loss of market confidence and employee morale and impairment of brand names can take a long time to play out, and may be hard to allocate among specific prior decisions. VaR marks the boundary between normal days and extreme events. Institutions can lose far more than the VaR amount; all that can be said is that they will not do so very often.

The generality of value-at-risk poses a computational challenge. In order to measure market risk in a portfolio using value-at-risk, some means must be found for determining the probability distribution of that portfolio’s market value. Obviously, the more complex a portfolio is—the more asset categories and sources of market risk it is exposed to—the more challenging that task becomes.

VaR is Calculated by using formula below mentioned

VaR​=[Expected Weighted Return of the Portfolio− (z-score of the confidence interval× standard deviation of the portfolio)]× portfolio value​