Equity Market Risk, Working Capital and Accruals Quality

The relation between market risk and fundamentals is not yet completely understood. We investigate the role of working capital ratio (WCR) in the evaluation of market risk measured by Value-at-Risk (VaR). We find a strong positive relation between WCR and VaR. We show that the positive sign of the relation between WCR and VaR is due to a low quality of the accruals component of the WCR. In addition, we find that the WCR gives a significant advantage to investors in estimating portfolio market risk especially during the crisis period.