Computing Value-at-Risk from a Skewed Student-t Distribution
Summary
The document describes how to obtain a left-tail quantile for the Fernandez–Steel skewed Student-t distribution and use it to calculate Value-at-Risk for a long position. It presents a piecewise quantile formula: the calculation depends on whether the requested probability falls below or above a threshold determined by the skewness parameter. The formula uses a unit-variance Student-t quantile, degrees of freedom, and an asymmetry coefficient.
The resulting risk measure adds the conditional mean to the product of conditional volatility and the skewed quantile. This connects the distributional quantile to a time-varying volatility model such as GARCH. The answer points to a paper for the derivation and says the formula concerns a non-standardized skewed distribution. Users need to confirm the parameterization and standardization used by their software, since skewed-t definitions can differ; the document does not provide a numerical example or compare alternative implementations.
Key ideas
- Skewness changes the quantile calculation, which is expressed in separate cases around a parameter-dependent threshold.
- The skewed quantile is constructed from quantiles of a unit-variance Student-t distribution.
- For a long position, the stated VaR combines the conditional mean with conditional volatility times the left-tail quantile.
- Check the distribution parameterization and standardization used by the software before applying the formula.
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Full text
# Value-at-Risk formula when using skewed-t distribution
# Value-at-Risk formula when using skewed-t distribution
I am trying to find a formula for the skewed-t VaR. For example the VaR formula for a t-distribution is
$$ \sqrt{\frac{df-2}{df}} \times \Sigma{t} \times \mbox{quantitle}(t-\mbox{dist}, 0.01) + \mu $$
(Please excuse the messy formula & the sigma(t) denotes a GARCH model)
However I am struggling to do the same for a skewed-t distribution
I am using the `rugarch` package in R and I am struggling to find out which version of the skewed-t distribution is being used. I went to the fGarch pdf and downloaded the reference ON BAYESIAN MODELLING OF FAT TAILS AND SKEWNESS by C. Fernandez et al., but my lack of Bayesian knowledge means the pdf it says is the Skew-Student is not helping perhaps as much as it should.
Any help would be much appreciated.
## Answer by Malick (score 3)
https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/21904
The answer can be found in the following paper (section 2.3 Distribution and quantile functions of a skewed distribution):
> Lambert and Laurent, 2002 Lambert, P., Laurent, S., 2002. Modeling skewness dynamics in series of financial data using skewed location-scale distributions. Working Paper, Université Catholique de Louvain and Université de Liège.
And I summarize it in the following :
The quantile function $skst_{\alpha,v,\xi}$ of a non standardized skewed-Student density (Fernandez and Steel (1998)) is given by : $$ skst_{\alpha,v,\xi}= \frac{1}{\xi}st_{\alpha,v}\left[ \frac{\alpha}{2}(1+\xi^2)\right] \qquad \text{if} \qquad \alpha < \frac{1}{1+\xi^2} $$
or :
$$ skst_{\alpha,v,\xi}= -\xi st_{\alpha,v}\left[ \frac{1-\alpha}{2}(1+\xi^{-2})\right] \qquad \text{if} \qquad \alpha \geq \frac{1}{1+\xi^2} $$
where $\xi$ is the asymmetry coefficient, $v$ the degree of freedom and $\alpha $ is the quantile probability. $st_{\alpha,v}$ is the quantile function of the (unit variance) Student-t density.
> Then the VaR for long position is given by $μ_{t} + > skst_{\alpha,v,\xi}\sigma_{t}$ with $skst_{\alpha,v,\xi}$ being the left quantile at $\alpha$% for the skewed-Student distribution with $v$ degrees of freedom and asymmetry coefficient $\xi$;$μ_{t}$ is the conditional mean process.
If you are interested in application, the g@rch package by S.Laurent in Ox programming language implements this computation (this answer is also based on its documentation).Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.