Measuring financial risk and portfolio optimization with a non-Gaussian multivariate model

In this paper, we propose a multivariate market model with returns assumed to follow a multivariate normal tempered stable distribution. This distribution, defined by a mixture of the multivariate normal distribution and the tempered stable subordinator, is consistent with two stylized facts that have been observed for asset distributions: fat-tails and an asymmetric dependence structure. Assuming infinitely divisible distributions, we derive closed-form solutions for two important measures used by portfolio managers in portfolio construction: the marginal VaR and the marginal AVaR. We illustrate the proposed model using stocks comprising the Dow Jones Industrial Average, first statistically validating the model based on goodness-of-fit tests and then demonstrating how the marginal VaR and marginal AVaR can be used for portfolio optimization using the model. Based on the empirical evidence presented in this paper, our framework offers more realistic portfolio risk measures and a more tractable method for portfolio optimization.     

加权分布模型测算个股VaR

本文在同时考虑企业的个性风险和企业将受到整个国家宏观经济形势影响的共性风险的基础上,用一种新的思路定权数,提出了用加权分布测算个股VaR的模型。并以在深圳股市上市的四家企业的股票收益率做实证分析和模型检验。结果表明:加权分布提高了原来的假设收益率分布服从单一分布下测量VaR的准确度,尤其对于个性风险较强的企业而言,加权分布模型是一种形式简单,而又较为精确的模型。     

Robust asset allocation with conditional value at risk using the forward search

The well‐known Markowitz approach to portfolio allocation, based on expected returns and their covariance, seems to provide questionable results in financial management. One motivation for the pitfall is that financial returns have heavier than Gaussian tails, so the covariance of returns, used in the Markowitz model as a measure of portfolio risk, is likely to provide a loose quantification of the effective risk. Additionally, the Markowitz approach is very sensitive to small changes in either the expected returns or their correlation, often leading to irrelevant portfolio allocations. More recent allocation techniques are based on alternative risk measures, such as value at risk (VaR) and conditional VaR (CVaR), which are believed to be more accurate measures of risk for fat‐tailed distributions. Nevertheless, both VaR and CVaR estimates can be influenced by the presence of extreme returns. In this paper, we discuss sensitivity to the presence of extreme returns and outliers when optimizing the allocation, under the constraint of keeping CVaR to a minimum. A robust and efficient approach, based on the forward search, is suggested. A Monte Carlo simulation study shows the advantages of the proposed approach, which outperforms both robust and nonrobust alternatives under a variety of specifications. The performance of the method is also thoroughly evaluated with an application to a set of US stocks.     

Estimating the tails of loss severity via conditional risk measures for the family of symmetric generalised hyperbolic distributions

This paper addresses one of the main challenges faced by insurance companies and risk management departments, namely, how to develop standardised framework for measuring risks of underlying portfolios and in particular, how to most reliably estimate loss severity distribution from historical data. This paper investigates tail conditional expectation (TCE) and tail variance premium (TVP) risk measures for the family of symmetric generalised hyperbolic (SGH) distributions. In contrast to a widely used Value-at-Risk (VaR) measure, TCE satisfies the requirement of the “coherent” risk measure taking into account the expected loss in the tail of the distribution while TVP incorporates variability in the tail, providing the most conservative estimator of risk. We examine various distributions from the class of SGH distributions, which turn out to fit well financial data returns and allow for explicit formulas for TCE and TVP risk measures. In parallel, we obtain asymptotic behaviour for TCE and TVP risk measures for large quantile levels. Furthermore, we extend our analysis to the multivariate framework, allowing multivariate distributions to model combinations of correlated risks, and demonstrate how TCE can be decomposed into individual components, representing contribution of individual risks to the aggregate portfolio risk.     

证券市场指数的尖峰厚尾特征与风险量估计

在对DOW,Nasdaq,S&P500和FTSE100等四个证券市场指数进行实证分析基础上,展示了证券市场指数的对数收益率具有尖峰厚尾的分布特征,并利用Logistic分布得到了很好的拟合,同时给出了基于Logistic分布的风险量VaR和CVaR的估计公式,以此计算证券市场指数的对数收益率的风险量VaR和CVaR的估计值.     

Value-at-Risk via mixture distributions reconsidered

Value-at-Risk (VaR) has evolved as one of the most prominent measures of downside risk in financial markets. Zhang and Cheng [M.-H. Zhang, Q.-S. Cheng, An Approach to VaR for capital markets with Gaussian mixture, Applied Mathematics and Computation 168 (2005) 1079–1085] proposed an approach to VaR for daily returns based on Gaussian mixtures, which have become rather popular in empirical economics and finance since the seminal paper of Hamilton [J.D. Hamilton, A new approach to the economic analysis of nonstationary time series and the business cycle, Econometrica 57 (2) (1989) 357–384]. However, they do not conduct tests to assess the accuracy of the mixture-implied VaR measures. Recently, Guidolin and Timmermann [M. Guidolin, A. Timmermann, Term structure of risk under alternative econometric specifications, Journal of Econometrics, 131 (2006) 285–308] showed that Markov mixture models do well in measuring VaR at a monthly frequency, but the results may not hold for daily returns due to their more pronounced non-Gaussian features. This paper provides an extensive application of various Markov mixture models to VaR for daily returns of major European stock markets, including out-of-sample backtesting. To accommodate the properties of daily returns, we consider both Gaussian and Student’s t mixtures, and we compare the performance of both uni- and multivariate models under different parameter updating schemes. We find that a univariate mixture of two Student’s t distributions performs best overall. However, by the example of the recent turmoil in financial markets, we also highlight a weak point of the approach.     

Estimating Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall using the intraday low and range data

Value-at-Risk (VaR) is a popular measure of market risk. To convey information regarding potential exceedances beyond the VaR, Expected Shortfall (ES) has become the risk measure for trading book bank regulation. However, the estimation of VaR and ES is challenging, as it requires the estimation of the tail behaviour of daily returns. In this paper, we take advantage of recent research that develops joint scoring functions for VaR and ES. Using these functions, we present a novel approach to estimating the two risk measures based on intraday data. We focus on the intraday range, which is the difference between the highest and lowest intraday log prices. In contrast to intraday observations, the intraday low and high are widely available for many financial assets. To alleviate the challenge of modelling extreme risk measures, we propose the use of the intraday low series. We draw on a theoretical result for Brownian motion to show that a quantile of the daily returns can be estimated as the product of a constant term and a less extreme quantile of the intraday low returns, which we define as the difference between the lowest log price of the day and the log closing price of the previous day. In view of this, we use estimates of the VaR and ES of the intraday low returns to estimate the VaR and ES of the daily returns. We provide empirical support for the new proposals using data for five stock indices and five individual stocks.     

A semiparametric Bayesian approach to the analysis of financial time series with applications to value at risk estimation

GARCH models are commonly used for describing, estimating and predicting the dynamics of financial returns. Here, we relax the usual parametric distributional assumptions of GARCH models and develop a Bayesian semiparametric approach based on modeling the innovations using the class of scale mixtures of Gaussian distributions with a Dirichlet process prior on the mixing distribution. The proposed specification allows for greater flexibility in capturing the usual patterns observed in financial returns. It is also shown how to undertake Bayesian prediction of the Value at Risk (VaR). The performance of the proposed semiparametric method is illustrated using simulated and real data from the Hang Seng Index (HSI) and Bombay Stock Exchange index (BSE30).     

Value at risk and inventory control

The purposes of this paper are two-fold. On the one hand, we shall provide a decision analysis justification for the Value at Risk (VaR) approach based on ex-post, disappointment decision making arguments. We shall show that the VaR approach is justified by a disappointment criterion. In other words, the asymmetric valuation between ex-ante expected returns above an appropriate target return and the expected returns below that same target level, provide an explanation for the VaR criterion when it is used as a tool for VaR efficiency design. Second, this paper provides applications to inventory management based on VaR risk exposure. Although the mathematical problems arising from an application of the VaR approach, tuned to current practice in financial risk management, are difficult to solve analytically, solutions can be found by application of standard computational and simulation techniques. A number of cases are solved and formulated to demonstrate the paper's applicability.     

Improving density forecast by modeling asymmetric features: An application to S&P500 returns

A density forecast is an estimate of the probability distribution of the possible future values of a random variable. From the current literature, an economic time series may have three types of asymmetry: asymmetry in unconditional distribution, asymmetry in conditional distribution, volatility asymmetry. In this paper, we propose three density forecasting methods under two-piece normal assumption to capture these asymmetric features. A GARCH model with two-piece normal distribution is developed to capture asymmetries in the conditional distributions. In this approach, we first estimate parameters of a GARCH model by assuming normal innovations, and then fit a two-piece normal distribution to the empirical residuals. Block bootstrap procedure, and moving average method with two-piece normal distribution are presented for volatility asymmetry and asymmetry in the conditional distributions. Application of the developed methods to the weekly S&P500 returns illustrates that forecast quality can be significantly improved by modeling these asymmetric features.     

Portfolio value-at-risk estimation in energy futures markets with time-varying copula-GARCH model

This paper combines copula functions with GARCH-type models to construct the conditional joint distribution, which is used to estimate Value-at-Risk (VaR) of an equally weighted portfolio comprising crude oil futures and natural gas futures in energy market. Both constant and time-varying copulas are applied to fit the dependence structure of the two assets returns. The findings show that the constant Student t copula is a good compromise for effectively fitting the dependence structure between crude oil futures and natural gas futures. Moreover, the skewed Student t distribution has a better fit than Normal and Student t distribution to the marginal distribution of each asset. Asymmetries and excess kurtosis are found in marginal distributions as well as in dependence. We estimate VaR of the underlying portfolio to be 95% and 99%, by using the Monte Carlo simulation. Then using backtesting, we compare the out-of-sample forecasting performances of VaR estimated by different models.     

基于几种风险测度的多阶段组合优化研究

基于均值-方差(MV)、VaR(Value at Risk)、CVaR(Conditional VaR)、HMCR(p=1,2,3)(Higher Moment Coherent Risk)几种风险测度进行多阶段组合优化研究。首先从一致性公理和随机占优一致性角度分析几种风险测度的风险识别能力,认为HMCR(p=2,3)的风险识别能力最高,然后给出静态和动态下的风险规避型的规划函数及多阶段CVaR和HMCR模型,最后依据单阶段和多阶段优化模型,对上证50指数成份股进行实证分析。对比单阶段和多阶段下几种风险测度优化组合的累计收益率及几种风险测度之间的关系,结合上证50指数收益率发现,多阶段优化组合要整体优于单阶段优化组合,且HMCR(p=2,3)要优于指数收益率和其它几种风险测度。从投资者投资决策方面来分析,HMCR(p=2,3)型积极投资策略比较适用于股市平稳期、顶峰期和下降期,被动投资策略比较适用于股市上升期。     

Generalized convolutions on R with applications to financial modeling

We present the theory and applications for generalized convolutions on the real line. We discuss generalized stable distributions and their use in modeling financial assets returns.     

Estimating value at risk with semiparametric support vector quantile regression

Value at Risk (VaR) has been used as an important tool to measure the market risk under normal market. Usually the VaR of log returns is calculated by assuming a normal distribution. However, log returns are frequently found not normally distributed. This paper proposes the estimation approach of VaR using semiparametric support vector quantile regression (SSVQR) models which are functions of the one-step-ahead volatility forecast and the length of the holding period, and can be used regardless of the distribution. We find that the proposed models perform better overall than the variance-covariance and linear quantile regression approaches for return data on S&P 500, NIKEI 225 and KOSPI 200 indices.     

基于下界VaR对沪深股市市场风险的实证研究

本文应用Luciano和Marena提出的计算资产组合VaR的上下界的方法,对沪深股市的市场风险做了实证研究,并与传统的正态VaR做了比较。实证分析表明,沪深股市的市场风险确实存在“厚尾”和“波动聚集”现象。本文对国内市场的波动聚集现象进行了详细分析．并讨论了风险控制模型的相关检验,下界VaR通过了两次模型检验。     

Fitting asset returns to skewed distributions: Are the skew-normal and skew-student good models?

Vernic (2006), Bolancé et al. (2008), and Eling (2012) identify the skew-normal and skew-student as promising models for describing actuarial loss data. In this paper, we change the focus from the liability to the asset side and ask whether these distributions are also useful for analyzing the investment returns of insurance companies. To answer this question, we fit various parametric distributions to capital market data which has been used to describe the investment set of insurance companies. Our results show that the skew-student is an especially promising distribution for modeling asset returns such as those of stocks, bonds, money market instruments, and hedge funds. Combining the results of Vernic (2006), Bolancé et al. (2008), Eling (2012), and this paper, it appears that the skew-student is a promising actuarial tool since it describes both sides of the insurer’s balance sheet reasonably well.     

基于稳定分布的PARCH模型

本文首先介绍了稳定分布和基于正态分布、稳定分布的PARCH模型,并通过股票指数收益率的稳定化PP图和直方图发现其具有高峰厚尾特征.最后,通过上证指数的VaR计算,得到在金融风险度量中基于稳定分布的PARCH模型比基于正态分布的PARCH模型更加有效。     

GARCH模型在股票市场风险计量中的应用

本文以上证综指的日收益率为研究对象,运用GARCH模型簇分析上海股市日收益率波动的条件异方差性,计算每天的V aR值.实证研究表明,GARCH模型的V aR计算方法对我国股市风险的管理有较好的效果.     

Statistical modelling of asymmetric risk in asset returns

The purpose of this article is to provide a straightforward model for asset returns which captures the fundamental asymmetry in upward versus downward returns. We model this feature by using scale gamma distributions for the conditional distributions of positive and negative returns. By allowing the parameters for positive returns to differ from parameters for negative returns we can test the hypothesis of symmetry. Some applications of this process to expected utility and semi-variance calculations are considered. Finally we estimate the model using daily UK FT100 index and Futures data.     

一类重尾风险因子的模拟及其投资高风险值和置信区间的估计

由于金融市场中的日周期或短周期对数回报率的样本数据多数呈现胖尾分布，于是现有的正态或对数正态分布模型都在不同程度上失效，为了准确模拟这种胖尾分布和提高投资风险估计及金融管理，本文引进了一种可根据实际金融市场数据作出调正的蒙特卡洛模拟方法．这个方法可以有效地复制金融产品价格的日周期对数回报率数据的胖尾分布．结合非参数估计方法，利用该模拟方法还得到投资高风险值以及高风险置信区间的准确估计。