This book is a guide to asset and risk management from a practical point of view. It is centered around two questions triggered by the global events on the stock markets since the middle of the last decade: - Why do crashes happen when in theory they should not? - How do investors deal with such crises in terms of their risk measurement and management and as a consequence, what are the implications for the chosen investment strategies? The book presents and discusses two different approaches to finance and investing, i.e., modern portfolio theory and behavioral finance, and provides an overview of stock market anomalies and historical crashes. It is intended to serve as a comprehensive introduction to asset and risk management for bachelor’s and master’s students in this field as well as for young professionals in the asset management industry. A key part of this book is the exercises to further demonstrate the concepts presented with examples and a step-by-step business case. An Excel file with the calculations and solutions for all 17 examples as well as all business case calculations can be downloaded at extras.springer.com.

The aim of this book is to study three essential components of modern finance – Risk Management, Asset Management and Asset and Liability Management, as well as the links that bind them together. It is divided into five parts: Part I sets out the financial and regulatory contexts that explain the rapid development of these three areas during the last few years and shows the ways in which the Risk Management function has developed recently in financial institutions. Part II is dedicated to the underlying theories of Asset Management and deals in depth with evaluation of financial assets and with theories relating to equities, bonds and options. Part III deals with a central theory of Risk Management, the general theory of Value at Risk or VaR, its estimation techniques and the setting up of the methodology. Part IV is the point at which Asset Management and Risk Management meet. It deals with Portfolio Risk Management (the application of risk management methods to private asset management), with an adaptation of Sharpe’s simple index method and the EGP method to suit VaR and application of the APT method to investment funds in terms of behavioural analysis. Part V is the point at which Risk Management and Asset and Liability Management (ALM) meet, and touches on techniques for measuring structural risks within the on and off balance sheet. The book is aimed both at financial professionals and at students whose studies contain a financial aspect. "Esch, Kieffer and Lopez have provided us with a comprehensive and well written treatise on risk. This is a must read, must keep volume for all those who need or aspire to a professional understanding of risk and its management." —Harry M Markowitz, San Diego, USA

Artificial intelligence (AI) has grown in presence in asset management and has revolutionized the sector in many ways. It has improved portfolio management, trading, and risk management practices by increasing efficiency, accuracy, and compliance. In particular, AI techniques help construct portfolios based on more accurate risk and return forecasts and more complex constraints. Trading algorithms use AI to devise novel trading signals and execute trades with lower transaction costs. AI also improves risk modeling and forecasting by generating insights from new data sources. Finally, robo-advisors owe a large part of their success to AI techniques. Yet the use of AI can also create new risks and challenges, such as those resulting from model opacity, complexity, and reliance on data integrity.

This book focuses on all major aspects of the asset management industry including its regulations, strategies, processes, applied technologies and risks. It provides a serious resource for readers seeking greater depth and alternative opinions on specific industry developments, and breadth for specialists interested in the dynamics of the industry.

The study of heavy-tailed distributions allows researchers to represent phenomena that occasionally exhibit very large deviations from the mean. The dynamics underlying these phenomena is an interesting theoretical subject, but the study of their statistical properties is in itself a very useful endeavor from the point of view of managing assets and controlling risk. In this book, the authors are primarily concerned with the statistical properties of heavy-tailed distributions and with the processes that exhibit jumps. A detailed overview with a Matlab implementation of heavy-tailed models applied in asset management and risk managements is presented. The book is not intended as a theoretical treatise on probability or statistics, but as a tool to understand the main concepts regarding heavy-tailed random variables and processes as applied to real-world applications in finance. Accordingly, the authors review approaches and methodologies whose realization will be useful for developing new methods for forecasting of financial variables where extreme events are not treated as anomalies, but as intrinsic parts of the economic process.

STRATEGIC RISK MANAGEMENT Having just experienced a global pandemic that sent equity markets into a tailspin in March 2020, risk management is a more relevant topic than ever. It remains, however, an often poorly understood afterthought. Many portfolios are designed without any thought given to risk management before they are handed off to a dedicated—but separate—risk management team. In Strategic Risk Management: Designing Portfolios and Managing Risk, Campbell R. Harvey, Sandy Rattray, and Otto Van Hemert deliver a reimagining of the risk management process. The book envisions a marriage between the investment and risk processes, an approach that has proven successful at the world’s largest publicly listed hedge fund, Man Group. The authors provide readers with a new framework for portfolio design that includes defensive strategies, drawdown risk controls, volatility targeting, and actively timing rebalancing trades. You will learn about how the book’s new approach to risk management fared during the recent market drawdown at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. You will also discover why the traditional risk weighting approach only works on certain classes of assets. The book shows you how to accurately evaluate the costs of defensive strategies and which ones offer the best and most cost-effective protection against market downturns. Finally, you will learn how to obtain a more balanced return stream by targeting volatility rather than a constant notional exposure and gain a deeper understanding of concepts like portfolio rebalancing. Perfect for people working in the asset management industry and financial policy makers, Strategic Risk Management: Designing Portfolios and Managing Risk will also earn a place in the libraries of economics and finance scholars, as well as casual readers who take an active approach to investing in their savings or pension assets. PRAISE FOR STRATEGIC RISK MANAGEMENT “Strategic Risk Management shows how to fully embed risk management into the portfolio management process as an equal partner to alpha. This should clearly be best practice for all asset managers.” —Jase Auby, Chief Investment Officer, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas “This book shows the power of integrating risk and investment management, rather than applying risk management as an afterthought to satisfy set limits. I was pleased to shepherd some of the key ideas in this book through the publication process at The Journal of Portfolio Management.” —Frank J. Fabozzi, Editor, The Journal of Portfolio Management “Financial markets today are quite different from those of the last century. Understanding leverage, correlations, tails, and other risk parameters of a portfolio is at least as important as work on signals and alpha. In that sense, bringing risk management from ‘control’ to ‘front office’ should be a priority for asset managers. This book explains how to do it.” —Marko Kolanovic, Chief Global Market Strategist, J.P. Morgan A powerful new approach to risk management in volatile and uncertain markets While the COVID-19 pandemic threw the importance of effective risk management into sharp relief, many investment firms hang on to a traditional and outdated model of risk management. Using siloed and independent portfolio management and risk monitoring teams, these firms miss out on the opportunities presented by integrated risk management. Strategic Risk Management: Designing Portfolios and Managing Risk delivers a fresh approach to risk management in difficult market conditions. The accomplished author team advocates for the amalgamation of portfolio design and risk monitoring teams, incorporating risk management into every aspect of portfolio design. The book provides a roadmap for the cr

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,3, University of Applied Sciences Essen, course: International Finance, language: English, abstract: Risk minimization and return maximization is what managers, shareholders and even private investors aspire. However, risk and return are highly correlated so that investors have to manage this trade-off. Risk management is thus essential both for investment managers and company executives. Within portfolio management and corporate practice risk can be reduced by diversification. In the “Risk Management” part Portfolio Theory – particularly Markowitz’ Portfolio Selection – is to be introduced and the most common measures of risk i.e. volatility, covariance, correlation and the beta factor are to be presented.The next section refers to Mergers and Acquisitions and starts with a general intro-duction of the topic. Afterwards, M&A is to be related to diversification as a means of risk minimization. Finally, by the example of ThyssenKrupp, the theoretical assumptions of the first two parts are to be applied.