Management of price risks. Value at risk for evaluating trading positions in the coal market

Diploma Thesis from the year 2005 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2.0, University of Applied Sciences Essen, course: International Risk Management, language: English, abstract: Two words deeply determine the world economic since the 90s of the 20thcentury - "risk" and "RiskManagement". However, coming to the result that these concerns have been ignored before that time would be seriously misinterpreted. Early trials to identify and analyse risks could be recognized by archaeological discoveries in the Euphrates-Tigris area and have been dated around the year 3.200 B.C. The economy already realized the importance of risks andRisk Managementat the beginning of modern economics. Today this concern is handled more exactly than in the Ancient World, with full awareness and more systematically. Taking risks more systematically into consideration is caused by more rapidly changing basic conditions in the world markets. But, what are the reasons for these developments? Some decades before the world economy proceeded in relative predictable channels and followed more or less fixed inherent laws. This could especially be noticed in many commodity markets, like the steam coal market. This market as a commodity market will be analysed in more detail in the scope of this diploma thesis. First hints for upcoming changes have been given by the oil crises in 1973. Up to this time, exorbitant increasing commodity prices could be observed only a few times and were not as serious. However, such increasing commodity prices and especially oil prices did not shake markets for twenty-five years and it turned out that the explosion of commodity prices could not be recognized till the end of the 20thcentury.