This book presents the concept of financial risk and the realties of financial risk management. Understanding risk and weighing risk against reward have become central to all commercial activity in particular to the financial markets. The concept of risk management used to refer to exclusively to the insurance industry but it was hijacked by wizards in financial institutions in the 1980s, initially to make their gambling in the markets seem more respectable. Good risk management requires a constant sharpening of one's awareness to new risks and to the probabilities of different outcomes. This guide will increase the reader's risk awareness, by presenting concepts in a simple and entertaining way, and by explaining the endeavors, mistakes and successes of others, as they have tried to identify, measure and simplify risk, and make it work for them. It looks at swaps, futures, options, derivatives, hedging principles, formulas, Monte Carlo simulations, chaos theory, neural networks, Raron (or risk-adjusted rate of return on capital), stress tests, worst case scenarios and all kinds of games that are played in the cause of managing risk. With great panache, color and clarity David Shirreff does a remarkable job of throwing light on one of the most complicated aspects of business and finance.
The essence of financial risk management is imagining what things might go wrong and then guarding against them. In the past thirty years, a whole industry has grown up around the idea that the behavior of financial markets can be analyzed and outsmarted by mathematical models. But markets are always changing. Modern risk management can only narrow down future outcomes into bands of probabilities. It can never predict; it can only infer what might happen. Ultimately, financial firms have learned that mathematics has limited power to calculate the likelihood of the less frequent more extreme events. As regulators and forward-thinking firms come to grips with this problem, they have ventured into the more uncertain territory of designing stress tests, imagining scenarios, and occasionally playing out entire fictions of the future. Risk management at these extremes challenges the wildest imagination and the frontiers of creativity. Like mountain climbing, it is about minimizing danger and taking calculated risks.
Dealing With Financial Risk is a clear and colorful guide to the peaks and crevasses of financial risk management, leading through the theory and practice of risk taking from swaps and futures to credit derivatives and the implications of Basel II, dynamic hedging, Monte Carlo simulations, chaos theory, neural networks, Raroc (risk-adjusted return on capital), stress tests, worst-case scenarios, and all kinds of games that are played in the cause of managing risk. In addition, it looks at some spectacular failures of risk management and the lessons that can be learned from them.
