RiskIn simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environment), often focusing on negative, undesirable consequences. Many different definitions have been proposed. The international standard definition of risk for common understanding in different applications is "effect of uncertainty on objectives".
Market riskMarket risk is the risk of losses in positions arising from movements in market variables like prices and volatility. There is no unique classification as each classification may refer to different aspects of market risk. Nevertheless, the most commonly used types of market risk are: Equity risk, the risk that stock or stock indices (e.g. Euro Stoxx 50, etc.) prices or their implied volatility will change. Interest rate risk, the risk that interest rates (e.g. Libor, Euribor, etc.) or their implied volatility will change.
Expected shortfallExpected shortfall (ES) is a risk measure—a concept used in the field of financial risk measurement to evaluate the market risk or credit risk of a portfolio. The "expected shortfall at q% level" is the expected return on the portfolio in the worst of cases. ES is an alternative to value at risk that is more sensitive to the shape of the tail of the loss distribution. Expected shortfall is also called conditional value at risk (CVaR), average value at risk (AVaR), expected tail loss (ETL), and superquantile.
Financial riskFinancial risk is any of various types of risk associated with financing, including financial transactions that include company loans in risk of default. Often it is understood to include only downside risk, meaning the potential for financial loss and uncertainty about its extent. A science has evolved around managing market and financial risk under the general title of modern portfolio theory initiated by Harry Markowitz in 1952 with his article, "Portfolio Selection".
BankA bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Whereby banks play an important role in financial stability and the economy of a country, most jurisdictions exercise a high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as fractional-reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities.
Mathematical financeMathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling of financial markets. In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that require advanced quantitative techniques: derivatives pricing on the one hand, and risk and portfolio management on the other. Mathematical finance overlaps heavily with the fields of computational finance and financial engineering.
Coherent risk measureIn the fields of actuarial science and financial economics there are a number of ways that risk can be defined; to clarify the concept theoreticians have described a number of properties that a risk measure might or might not have. A coherent risk measure is a function that satisfies properties of monotonicity, sub-additivity, homogeneity, and translational invariance. Consider a random outcome viewed as an element of a linear space of measurable functions, defined on an appropriate probability space.
2007–2008 financial crisisThe 2007–2008 financial crisis, or Global Financial Crisis (GFC), was a severe worldwide economic crisis that occurred in the early 21st century. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression (1929). Predatory lending targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm". Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) tied to American real estate, as well as a vast web of derivatives linked to those MBS, collapsed in value.
Copula (probability theory)In probability theory and statistics, a copula is a multivariate cumulative distribution function for which the marginal probability distribution of each variable is uniform on the interval [0, 1]. Copulas are used to describe/model the dependence (inter-correlation) between random variables. Their name, introduced by applied mathematician Abe Sklar in 1959, comes from the Latin for "link" or "tie", similar but unrelated to grammatical copulas in linguistics.
Hedge (finance)A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses or gains that may be incurred by a companion investment. A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insurance, forward contracts, swaps, options, gambles, many types of over-the-counter and derivative products, and futures contracts.
Risk measureIn financial mathematics, a risk measure is used to determine the amount of an asset or set of assets (traditionally currency) to be kept in reserve. The purpose of this reserve is to make the risks taken by financial institutions, such as banks and insurance companies, acceptable to the regulator. In recent years attention has turned towards convex and coherent risk measurement. A risk measure is defined as a mapping from a set of random variables to the real numbers. This set of random variables represents portfolio returns.
Fundamental Review of the Trading BookThe Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB), is a set of proposals by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision for a new market risk-related capital requirement for banks. The reform, which is part of Basel III, is one of the initiatives taken to strengthen the financial system, noting that the previous proposals (Basel II) did not prevent the financial crisis of 2007–2008. It was first published as a Consultative Document in October 2013.
Economic capitalIn finance, mainly for financial services firms, economic capital (ecap) is the amount of risk capital, assessed on a realistic basis, which a firm requires to cover the risks that it is running or collecting as a going concern, such as market risk, credit risk, legal risk, and operational risk. It is the amount of money that is needed to secure survival in a worst-case scenario. Firms and financial services regulators should then aim to hold risk capital of an amount equal at least to economic capital.
Liquidity riskLiquidity risk is a financial risk that for a certain period of time a given financial asset, security or commodity cannot be traded quickly enough in the market without impacting the market price. Market liquidity – An asset cannot be sold due to lack of liquidity in the market – essentially a sub-set of market risk.
Quantitative analysis (finance)Quantitative analysis is the use of mathematical and statistical methods in finance and investment management. Those working in the field are quantitative analysts (quants). Quants tend to specialize in specific areas which may include derivative structuring or pricing, risk management, investment management and other related finance occupations. The occupation is similar to those in industrial mathematics in other industries.
Distortion risk measureIn financial mathematics and economics, a distortion risk measure is a type of risk measure which is related to the cumulative distribution function of the return of a financial portfolio. The function associated with the distortion function is a distortion risk measure if for any random variable of gains (where is the Lp space) then where is the cumulative distribution function for and is the dual distortion function . If almost surely then is given by the Choquet integral, i.e.
Entropic value at riskIn financial mathematics and stochastic optimization, the concept of risk measure is used to quantify the risk involved in a random outcome or risk position. Many risk measures have hitherto been proposed, each having certain characteristics. The entropic value at risk (EVaR) is a coherent risk measure introduced by Ahmadi-Javid, which is an upper bound for the value at risk (VaR) and the conditional value at risk (CVaR), obtained from the Chernoff inequality. The EVaR can also be represented by using the concept of relative entropy.
Basel AccordsThe Basel Accords refer to the banking supervision accords (recommendations on banking regulations) issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). Basel I was developed through deliberations among central bankers from major countries. In 1988, the Basel Committee published a set of minimum capital requirements for banks. This is also known as the 1988 Basel Accord, and was enforced by law in the Group of Ten (G-10) countries in 1992. A new set of rules known as Basel II was developed and published in 2004 to supersede the Basel I accords.
FinanceFinance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, which is the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of financial economics bridges the two). Finance activities take place in financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into personal, corporate, and public finance.
Investment bankingInvestment banking pertains to certain activities of a financial services company or a corporate division that consist in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated with corporate finance, such a bank might assist in raising financial capital by underwriting or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of debt or equity securities.
