Value at Risk (VaR) margin

This one is not written up yet

The definition above is the short version. A full explanation — how it works, a worked example and the exam traps — is still being written. In the meantime the chapter below covers it in context.

Written up from the same chapter

• Base Minimum CapitalThe deposit every trading member must keep with the exchange purely to meet contingencies — it earns the member no trading exposure at all, and its size depends on what kind of trading the member does.
• Extreme Loss MarginA flat 3.5 per cent margin collected on cash-market positions to cover losses falling outside what the VaR margin is designed to capture.
• Impact costThe percentage by which a market order's actual execution price degrades against the ideal price — the mid-point of the best bid and the best offer — and so the real cost of trading in size.
• Liquid Net WorthThe part of a merchant banker's net worth deployed in unencumbered liquid assets, counted after a prescribed haircut on each asset type — a second capital test that net worth alone cannot satisfy.
• Margin pledgeThe only permitted way for a client to give securities as margin — a special pledge created in the depository system that leaves the shares in the client's own demat account instead of transferring them to the broker.
• SPANThe scenario-based system clearing corporations use to compute initial margin — it revalues a client's whole derivatives portfolio under sixteen what-if scenarios and charges the worst loss.