Hedging a portfolio with futures

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: A, Wright State University (Raj Soin College of Business), language: English, abstract: Abstract

Undertaking business always involves taking risk. The future development of a company and their business is more uncertain the higher the risk that the company is facing. Risk management is a important factor in operating business. With the development of future markets entrepreneurs and investors obtained another risk management tool that made it possible to reduce risk. Futures are derivatives that can be used either for speculating or risk management. Especially in the area of financial futures, a rapid growth could be observed during the last few decades. Almost every month a new type of contract appears to meet the needs of a continuously growing corporate and institutional market.

This paper considers future contracts as hedging application to reduce price risk. Futures are standardized contracts to buy or sell an asset in the future. There are various types of futures which differ in the type of the underlying asset.

Futures are traded at organized exchanges. We consider the trading of future, their requirements, and market participants and their motivation.

Different commercial users of future contracts hedge in different ways. A long hedge is used to reduce price risk of an anticipated purchase whereas a short hedge reduces the price risk of an asset that is already held. If there is no exact, the hedgers needs matching, contract available, the hedger should use a cross hedging strategy. With all these strategies the hedger takes, to the asset opposite, a position in the future market that is highly correlated with the change in price of the asset in the spot market. Losses in one market are offset by gains in the other market.

For a successful hedge it is essential to choose an appropriate contract and hedge ratio. Faults can result in losses. The example of hedging a stock portfolio shows the application of an index future and presents the behavior of the hedged portfolio in different scenarios of stock market development.