Risk management

Managing Investments in a Crisis

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Mobility and a long term outlook are essential when managing your portfolio in a crisis. The ability to select the best quality long term investments from the traditional and emerging markets. For hedging mobility is key, the ability to access Foreign Exchange, Commodities and Futures to balance your risk is a new fundamental asset for investors. Cash is no longer king and the value of the USD is being eroded which means everyone must rethink their investment strategy and adjust their portfolio holdings. While many think that if they live in the USA and earn in USD nothing will change, … Read more

Using Logic To Examine Risk

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This article is very interesting and should be read. You can find it at:http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Using-Logic-To-Examine-investopedia-437029966.html?x=0 Brian Bloch, On Friday July 22, 2011, 11:52 am EDT In 1660, Blaise Pascal did some pioneering work on risk. He was dealing with theology, but the implications for the capital market are unmistakable. His original concern was the expected value of believing in god.. He attempted to convert nebulous uncertainties into calculable probabilities – what we now call risk. His “expected values” are the basis of modern risk theory. Pascal demonstrated that uncertainty is about people, their beliefs and their courage, while calculated risk is … Read more

How to Deal With Excessive Risk Concentration?

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Jonathan Jacob of Forethought Risk, an independent risk advisory firm, sent me his Benefits Canada article, How to deal with excessive risk concentration:

In my previous column, Examining portfolio risk, we discussed ex-ante risk, ex-post risk and how both measures can provide greater understanding of portfolio risk. In this column I would like to discuss the options that are available to a pension fund manager that discovers excessive risk concentration in a fund through ex-ante risk reports.When a pension fund utilizes the services of multiple investment managers, there is potential for overlap of risk, causing excessive concentration of risk. Excessive risk concentration can be found in exposure to a single company, a sector of the economy, or a currency among others. If the pension fund manager receives ex-ante reports on risk which aggregate all investment manager portfolios, he or she may recognize an exposure as excessive prior to a potential blow-up.

One potential approach to the excessive risk is to ask one of the investment managers to trim risk to the asset with excess exposure. The investment manager will likely disapprove the request, justifiably claiming that the initial agreement did not include such restrictions and any future measurement of their performance will be tainted by this decision.

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