How Value at Risk Helps Measure and Control Liquidity Risk

Key takeaways:

• VaR shows the most you might lose in normal conditions. It helps you set a clear loss limit before investing. 
   
• Liquidity-adjusted VaR adds the real cost of quick selling. It gives a more practical view of actual losses.
   
• Keep cash ready and avoid hard-to-sell assets. This helps you handle sudden cash needs without panic.
   
• Always pair VaR with stress tests for better safety. This helps you prepare for extreme market situations.

Bonus Tip: VaR got its big push after the 1998 collapse of Long Term Capital Management.

Markets can fall anytime, but the real question is how much you’re prepared to lose before it happens. Sonam put her savings in stocks. One week, the prices dropped suddenly and she started worrying about bigger losses coming. She used Value at Risk to check how much she could lose in a bad market. It gave her a clear limit on the loss. After seeing that, she sold some risky stocks and kept some cash ready. Later, when the market fell again, her losses stayed under control and she did not panic sell.

What is Value at Risk (VaR)?

Value at Risk or VaR is a way to guess how much money you might lose over a set time. It gives one number that shows the biggest loss you can expect under normal conditions at a chosen confidence level. 

For example, 95% VaR means there is a 5% chance the loss could be higher than that number. There are different ways to calculate VaR, like parametric, historical, and simulation methods.

Link Between VaR and Liquidity Risk

Liquidity risk is when you do not have cash when you need it or you cannot sell your assets quickly without losing a lot of money. VaR links to this because it shows how much you may lose when prices move. If losses are big, you may have to sell assets fast. If those assets are hard to sell, liquidity risk becomes a big problem. That is why liquidity-adjusted VaR is useful. It adds the extra cost of selling such assets.

Value at Risk Calculation

Let’s take Sonam’s example.

She invested ₹1,00,000 in stocks and wants to find the one-day VaR at 95% confidence.

Value at Risk formula (Parametric method):

VaR = Portfolio Value × Volatility × Z-score

This value at risk calculation assumes normal price changes and skips expected return for short periods like one day.
 

Calculation:

VaR = 1,00,000 × 0.02 × 1.65

VaR = ₹3,300

This means there is a 5% chance Sonam could lose more than ₹3,300 in one day. Note that 2% is quite high for daily risk. Most real portfolios have lower volatility.

How VaR Helps Measure Liquidity Risk?

VaR works better when we also think about how easy it is to sell the assets. If Sonam holds assets that are not traded much, selling them quickly can make her loss bigger because of price impact and wider spreads.

Liquidity-adjusted VaR includes these extra costs. It gives a more real risk number. It helps spot positions that may cause cash problems during tough times and lets her plan better before such situations come up. By using the value at risk formula, we can find approx risk in normal days. Along with this, conditional value at risk helps understand the average loss if things go worse than the VaR limit. You can also check value at risk Investopedia to explore more

Methods to Control Liquidity Risk Using VaR

Here are some easy ways to control liquidity risk with VaR. These steps help you manage both possible losses and cash needs.
 

Sell some small company shares and buy shares of big stable companies instead.

Keep some cash or easy-to-sell assets in the portfolio

Keep 10-15% money in fixed deposits or government bonds that sell quickly.

Hold illiquid investments for a longer time

Keep property or private shares for 3 to 5 years instead of selling fast.

Include selling costs and spreads when calculating VaR

Add 0.5% extra cost for spread while working out VaR for mid-cap stocks.