The Question Being Asked in VaR
“What loss level is such that we are X% confident it will not be exceeded in N business days?
”VaR and Regulatory Capital !
Regulators base the capital they require banks to keep on VaR !
The market-risk capital is k times the 10-day 99% VaR where k is at least 3.0 !
Under Basel II, capital for credit risk and operational risk is based on a one-year 99.9% VaR