Journal of Risk and Financial Management — Open Access Journal

This paper establishes a selection of stylized facts for high-frequency cointegrated processes, based on one-minute-binned transaction data. A methodology is introduced to simulate cointegrated stock pairs, following none, some or all of these stylized facts. AR(1)-GARCH(1,1) and MR(3)-STAR(1)-GARCH(1,1) processes contaminated with reversible and non-reversible jumps are used to model the cointegration relationship. In a Monte Carlo simulation, the power and size properties of ten cointegration tests are assessed. We find that in high-frequency settings typical for stock price data, power is still acceptable, with the exception of strong or very frequent non-reversible jumps. Phillips–Perron and PGFF tests perform best. Full article

Neural networks are well suited to predict future results of time series for various data types. This paper proposes a hybrid neural network model to describe the results of the database of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). This hybrid model brings together a self organizing map (SOM) with a multilayer perceptron with back propagation algorithm (MLP-BP). The SOM aims to segment the database into different clusters, where the differences between them are highlighted. The MLP-BP is used to construct a descriptive mathematical model that describes the relationship between the indicators and the closing value of each cluster. The model was developed from a database consisting of the NYSE Composite US 100 Index over the period of 2 April 2004 to 31 December 2015. As input variables for neural networks, ten technical financial indicators were used. The model results were fairly accurate, with a mean absolute percentage error varying between 0.16% and 0.38%. Full article

We provide an accurate closed-form expression for the expected shortfall of linear portfolios with elliptically distributed risk factors. Our results aim to correct inaccuracies that originate in Kamdem (2005) and are present also in at least thirty other papers referencing it, including the recent survey by Nadarajah et al. (2014) on estimation methods for expected shortfall. In particular, we show that the correction we provide in the popular multivariate Student t setting eliminates understatement of expected shortfall by a factor varying from at least four to more than 100 across different tail quantiles and degrees of freedom. As such, the resulting economic impact in financial risk management applications could be significant. We further correct such errors encountered also in closely related results in Kamdem (2007 and 2009) for mixtures of elliptical distributions. More generally, our findings point to the extra scrutiny required when deploying new methods for expected shortfall estimation in practice. Full article

This paper deals with the optimal retention level under four competitive criteria: survival probability, expected profit, variance and expected shortfall of the insurer’s risk. The aggregate claim amounts are assumed to be distributed as compound Poisson, and the individual claim amounts are distributed exponentially. We present an approach to determine the optimal retention level that maximizes the expected profit and the survival probability, whereas minimizing the variance and the expected shortfall of the insurer’s risk. In the decision making process, we concentrate on multi-attribute decision making methods: the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) methods with their extended versions. We also provide comprehensive analysis for the determination of the optimal retention level under both the expected value and standard deviation premium principles. Full article

By reinterpreting the calibration of structural models, a reassessment of the importance of the input variables is undertaken. The analysis shows that volatility is the key parameter to any calibration exercise, by several orders of magnitude. To maximize the sensitivity to volatility, a simple formulation of Merton’s model is proposed that employs deep out-of-the-money option implied volatilities. The methodology also eliminates the use of historic data to specify the default barrier, thereby leading to a full risk-neutral calibration. Subsequently, a new technique for identifying and hedging capital structure arbitrage opportunities is illustrated. The approach seeks to hedge the volatility risk, or vega, as opposed to the exposure from the underlying equity itself, or delta. The results question the efficacy of the common arbitrage strategy of only executing the delta hedge. Full article

This paper studies the optimal mortgage choice of an investor in a simple bond market with a stochastic interest rate and access to term life insurance. The study is based on advances in stochastic control theory, which provides analytical solutions to portfolio problems with a stochastic interest rate. We derive the optimal portfolio of a mortgagor in a simple framework and formulate stylized versions of mortgage products offered in the market today. This allows us to analyze the optimal investment strategy in terms of optimal mortgage choice. We conclude that certain extreme investors optimally choose either a traditional fixed rate mortgage or an adjustable rate mortgage, while investors with moderate risk aversion and income prefer a mix of the two. By matching specific investor characteristics to existing mortgage products, our study provides a better understanding of the complex and yet restricted mortgage choice faced by many household investors. In addition, the simple analytical framework enables a detailed analysis of how changes to market, income and preference parameters affect the optimal mortgage choice. Full article

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of board structure on the performance of French firms in the presence of several monitoring committees. We studied 80 publicly listed French firms spanning from 2001 to 2013. We concluded that large board size has a negative effect on market performance. While large board size in combination with the existence of at least three committees enhances accounting performance and does not have any impact on market performance, the existence of a board dominated by independent directors with the presence of at least three committees seems to have only a negative impact on accounting performance. Our findings indicate that monitoring committees are beneficial for shareholders only for corporations with a large board size. Full article

Due to the recent financial crisis and European debt crisis, credit risk evaluation has become an increasingly important issue for financial institutions. Reliable credit scoring models are crucial for commercial banks to evaluate the financial performance of clients and have been widely studied in the fields of statistics and machine learning. In this paper a novel fuzzy support vector machine (SVM) credit scoring model is proposed for credit risk analysis, in which fuzzy membership is adopted to indicate different contribution of each input point to the learning of SVM classification hyperplane. Considering the methodological consistency, support vector data description (SVDD) is introduced to construct the fuzzy membership function and to reduce the effect of outliers and noises. The SVDD-based fuzzy SVM model is tested against the traditional fuzzy SVM on two real-world datasets and the research results confirm the effectiveness of the presented method. Full article

Special investment vehicles (SIVs), extremely popular financial structures for the creation of highly-rated tranched securities, experienced spectacular demise in the 2007-2008 financial crisis. These financial vehicles epitomize the shadow banking sector, characterized by high leverage, undiversified asset pools, and long-dated assets supported by short-term debt, thus bearing material rollover risk on their liabilities which led to defeasance. This paper models these vehicles, and shows that imposing leverage risk control triggers can be optimal for all capital providers, though they may not always be appropriate. The efficacy of these risk controls varies depending on anticipated asset volatility and fire-sale discounts on defeasance. Despite risk management controls, we show that a high failure rate is inherent in the design of these vehicles, and may be mitigated to some extent by including contingent capital provisions in the ex-ante covenants. Post the recent subprime financial crisis, we inform the creation of safer SIVs in structured finance, and propose avenues of mitigating risks faced by senior debt through deleveraging policies in the form of leverage risk controls and contingent capital. Full article

The paper compares portfolio optimization with the Second-Order Stochastic Dominance (SSD) constraints with mean-variance and minimum variance portfolio optimization. As a distribution-free decision rule, stochastic dominance takes into account the entire distribution of return rather than some specific characteristic, such as variance. The paper is focused on practical applications of the portfolio optimization and uses the Portfolio Safeguard (PSG) package, which has precoded modules for optimization with SSD constraints, mean-variance and minimum variance portfolio optimization. We have done in-sample and out-of-sample simulations for portfolios of stocks from the Dow Jones, S&P 100 and DAX indices. The considered portfolios’ SSD dominate the Dow Jones, S&P 100 and DAX indices. Simulation demonstrated a superior performance of portfolios with SD constraints, versus mean-variance and minimum variance portfolios. Full article

This paper investigates the information content of the ex post overnight return for one-day-ahead equity Value-at-Risk (VaR) forecasting. To do so, we deploy a univariate VaR modeling approach that constructs the forecast at market open and, accordingly, exploits the available overnight close-to-open price variation. The benchmark is the bivariate VaR modeling approach proposed by Ahoniemi et al. that constructs the forecast at the market close instead and, accordingly, it models separately the daytime and overnight return processes and their covariance. For a small cap portfolio, the bivariate VaR approach affords superior predictive ability than the ex post overnight VaR approach whereas for a large cap portfolio the results are reversed. The contrast indicates that price discovery at the market open is less efficient for small capitalization, thinly traded stocks. Full article

This study explores social capital and its relevance to bank risk taking across countries. Our empirical results show that the levels of bank risk taking are lower in countries with higher levels of social capital, and that the impact of social capital is mainly reflected by the reduced value of the standard deviation of return on assets. Moreover, the impact of social capital is found to be weaker when the legal system lacks strength. Furthermore, the study considers the impacts of social capital of the banks’ largest shareholders in these countries and finds that high levels of social capital present in these countries exert a negative effect on bank risk taking, but the effect is not strongly significant. Full article

Several market and macro-level variables influence the evolution of equity risk in addition to the well-known volatility persistence. However, the impact of those covariates might change depending on the risk level, being different between low and high volatility states. By combining equity risk estimates, obtained from the Realized Range Volatility, corrected for microstructure noise and jumps, and quantile regression methods, we evaluate the forecasting implications of the equity risk determinants in different volatility states and, without distributional assumptions on the realized range innovations, we recover both the points and the conditional distribution forecasts. In addition, we analyse how the the relationships among the involved variables evolve over time, through a rolling window procedure. The results show evidence of the selected variables’ relevant impacts and, particularly during periods of market stress, highlight heterogeneous effects across quantiles. Full article

We consider a system where the asset values of firms are correlated with the default thresholds. We first evaluate the probability of default of a single firm under the correlated assets assumptions. This extends Merton’s probability of default of a single firm under the independent asset values assumption. At any time, the distance-to-default for a single firm is derived in the system, and this distance-to-default should provide a different measure for credit rating with the correlated asset values into consideration. Then we derive a closed formula for the joint default probability and a general closed formula for the default correlation via the correlated multivariate process of the first-passage-time default correlation model. Our structural model encodes the sensitivities of default correlations with respect to the underlying correlation among firms’ asset values. We propose the disparate credit risk management from our result in contrast to the commonly used risk measurement methods considering default correlations into consideration. Full article

This paper features an analysis of the effectiveness of a range of portfolio diversification strategies, with a focus on down-side risk metrics, as a portfolio diversification strategy in a European market context. We apply these measures to a set of daily arithmetically-compounded returns, in U.S. dollar terms, on a set of ten market indices representing the major European markets for a nine-year period from the beginning of 2005 to the end of 2013. The sample period, which incorporates the periods of both the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the subsequent European Debt Crisis (EDC), is a challenging one for the application of portfolio investment strategies. The analysis is undertaken via the examination of multiple investment strategies and a variety of hold-out periods and backtests. We commence by using four two-year estimation periods and a subsequent one-year investment hold out period, to analyse a naive 1/N diversification strategy and to contrast its effectiveness with Markowitz mean variance analysis with positive weights. Markowitz optimisation is then compared to various down-side investment optimisation strategies. We begin by comparing Markowitz with CVaR, and then proceed to evaluate the relative effectiveness of Markowitz with various draw-down strategies, utilising a series of backtests. Our results suggest that none of the more sophisticated optimisation strategies appear to dominate naive diversification. Full article

The recent financial crisis triggered the greatest recession since the 1930s and had a devastating impact on households’ wealth and on their capacity to reduce their indebtedness. In the aftermath, it became clear that there is significant room for improvement in property risk management. While there has been innovation in the management of corporate finance risk, real estate has lagged behind. Now is the time to expand the range of tools available for hedging households’ risks and, thus, to advance the democratization of finance. Property equity represents the major asset in households’ portfolios in developed and undeveloped countries. The present paper analyzes a set of potential innovations in real estate risk management, such as price level-adjusted mortgages, property derivatives, and home equity value insurance. Financial institutions, households, and governments should work together to improve the performance of the financial instruments available and, thus, to help mitigate the worst impacts of economic cycles. Full article

In this paper, we demonstrate the superiority of vine copulas over conventional copulas when modeling the dependence structure of a credit portfolio. We show statistical and economic implications of replacing conventional copulas by vine copulas for a subportfolio of the Euro Stoxx 50 and the S&P 500 companies, respectively. Our study includes D-vines and R-vines where the bivariate building blocks are chosen from the Gaussian, the t and the Clayton family. Our findings are (i) the conventional Gauss copula is deficient in modeling the dependence structure of a credit portfolio and economic capital is seriously underestimated; (ii) D-vine structures offer a better statistical fit to the data than classical copulas, but underestimate economic capital compared to R-vines; (iii) when mixing different copula families in an R-vine structure, the best statistical fit to the data can be achieved which corresponds to the most reliable estimate for economic capital. Full article

The ground-breaking Black-Scholes-Merton model has brought about a generation of derivative pricing models that have been successfully applied in the financial industry. It has been a long standing puzzle that the structural models of credit risk, as an application of the same modeling paradigm, do not perform well empirically. We argue that the ability to accurately compute and dynamically update hedge ratios to facilitate a capital structure arbitrage is a distinctive strength of the Black-Scholes-Merton’s modeling paradigm which could be utilized in credit risk models as well. Our evidence is economically significant: We improve the implementation of a simple structural model so that it is more suitable for our application and then devise a simple capital structure arbitrage strategy based on the model. We show that the trading strategy persistently produced substantial risk-adjusted profit. Full article

VaR (Value at Risk) and CVaR (Conditional Value at Risk) are implied by option prices. Their relationships to option prices are derived initially under the pricing measure. It does not require assumptions about the distribution of portfolio returns. The effects of changes of measure are modest at the short horizons typically used in applications. The computation of CVaR from option price is very convenient, because this measure is not elicitable, making direct comparisons of statistical inferences from market data problematic. Full article