Financial Risk Management with R

Overview

Class Central Tips

This course teaches you how to calculate the return of a portfolio of securities as well as quantify the market risk of that portfolio, an important skill for financial market analysts in banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, and other financial services and investment firms. Using the R programming language with Microsoft Open R and RStudio, you will use the two main tools for calculating the market risk of stock portfolios: Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES). You will need a beginner-level understanding of R programming to complete the assignments of this course.

Syllabus

Introduction to R, Data Retrieval, and Return Calculation

This module goes over the versions of R (R Studio and Microsoft Open R), the data source (FRED at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), and the calculation of returns.

Risk Management under Normal Distributions

This module covers how to calculate value-at-risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES) when returns are normally distributed.

Risk Management under Non-normal Distributions

This module covers how to test for normality of returns, and how to calculate value-at-risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES) when returns are not normally distributed.

Risk Management under Volatility Clustering

This module covers how to test for the presence of volatility clustering, and how to calculate value-at-risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES) when returns exhibit volatility clustering.