Accurate Value-at-Risk Forecasting Based on the (good old) Normal-GARCH Model

A resampling method based on the bootstrap and a bias-correction step is developed for improving the Value-at-Risk (VaR) forecasting ability of the normal GARCH model. Compared to the use of more sophisticated GARCH models, the new method is fast, easy to implement, numerically reliable, and, except for having to choose a window length L for the bias-correction step, fully data driven. The results for several different financial asset returns over a long out-of-sample forecasting period, as well as use of simulated data, strongly support use of the new method, and the performance is not sensitive to the choice of L.