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Jpmorgan Chase London Whale C: Risk Limits, Metrics, And Models, Arwin G. Zeissler, Andrew Metrick
Jpmorgan Chase London Whale C: Risk Limits, Metrics, And Models, Arwin G. Zeissler, Andrew Metrick
Journal of Financial Crises
Value at Risk (VaR) is one of the most commonly used ways to measure and monitor market risk. At JPMorgan Chase (JPM), very large derivative positions established by Bruno Iksil in the Synthetic Credit Portfolio (SCP) caused the bank’s Chief Investment Office (CIO) to exceed its VaR limit for four days in a row in January 2012. In response, the CIO changed to a new VaR model on January 30, which appeared to immediately reduce VaR by half. However, JPM soon discovered that this new VaR model had not been properly implemented and the bank went back to using the …
Jpmorgan Chase London Whale B: Derivatives Valuation, Arwin G. Zeissler, Andrew Metrick
Jpmorgan Chase London Whale B: Derivatives Valuation, Arwin G. Zeissler, Andrew Metrick
Journal of Financial Crises
After consistently producing positive results through 2011, the JPMorgan Chase (JPM) traders who oversaw the bank’s Synthetic Credit Portfolio (SCP) grew alarmed by a consistent string of losses beginning in January 2012. (The SCP was maintained by JPM to help hedge default risk and was the source of the 2012 London Whale trading loss.) To minimize the losses reported to their superiors until such time that market prices hopefully turned in their favor, the SCP traders began valuing their largest derivative positions in a manner that was not consistent with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and JPM policy. The fair …