Portfolio risk management with value at risk: A monte-carlo simulation on ISE-100

Abstract

Value at Risk (VaR) is a common statistical method that has been used recently to measure market risk. In other word, it is a risk measure which can predict the maximum loss over the portfolio at a certain level of confidence. Value at risk, in general, is used by the banks during the calculation process to determine the minimum capital amount against market risks. Furthermore, it can also be exploited to calculate the maximum loss at investment portfolios designated for stock markets. The purpose of this study is to compare the VaR and Markowitz efficient frontier approach in terms of portfolio risks. Along with this angle, we have calculated the optimal portfolio by Portfolio Optimization method based on average variance calculated from the daily closing prices of the ninety-one stocks traded under the Ulusal-100 index of the Istanbul Stock Exchange in 2011. Then, for each of designated portfolios, Monte-Carlo Simulation Method was run for thousand times to calculate the VaR. Finally, we concluded that there is a parallel relationship between the calculated optimum portfolio risks and VaR values of the portfolios.