Like all tools, VAR has its limitations and it offers naive users false comfort. Nevertheless, it belongs in the risk management arsenal for monitoring and controlling the risk of trading positions and investment portfolios. Using VAR in a corporate setting is another matter entirely, especially for industrial corporations. They may have legitimate reasons to manage some of the risk they face but VAR is not likely to be an informative indicator of the efficacy of those risk management programs. VAR fails in a corporate setting because, for most non-financial companies, many of the assets and liabilities are not liquid. Consequently, VAR tells investors about the exposure of the financial instruments to gain or loss, but not about the gains or losses for the remainder of the company’s assets and liabilities (such as a gold mine’s reserves) or about the relationship between gains and losses on the hedging instruments and gains and losses on its other assets and liabilities.