In finance, a hedgeis a position established in one market in an attempt to offset exposure to the price risk of an equal but opposite obligation or position in another market — usually, but not always, in the context of one's commercial activity. Hedging is a strategy designed to minimize exposure to such business risks as a sharp contraction in demand for one's inventory, while still allowing the business to profit from producing and maintaining that inventory. A typical hedger might be a farmer with 2000 acres of unharvested wheat in the ground, who would rather tend his crop without the distraction of uncertain prices. He's a farmer, not a speculator, yet his unharvested "inventory" may have lost 35% of its value ($285,000) in the three months he's been planning his planting. He might have decided he could live with a price of only eight or nine dollars a bushel, and to offset his planted position with an approximately equal but opposite position in the market for wheat on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange by selling ten wheat futures contracts for December delivery. This farmer is thereby a hedger indifferent to the movements of the market as a whole, and has reduced his price risk to the difference between the price he will receive from a local buyer at harvest time, and the price at which he will simultaneously liquidate his obligation to the Exchange. Holbrook Working, a pioneer in hedging theory, called this strategy "speculation in the basis,"[1] where the basis is the difference between today's market value of (in this example) wheat and today's value of the hedge. If that difference widens, he earns a little more at harvest time. If that difference narrows, he earns a little less. He has mitigated, but not eliminated, the risk of losing the value of his wheat as of the day he established his hedge.
Some form of risk taking is inherent to any business activity. Some risks are considered to be "natural" to specific businesses, such as the risk of oil prices increasing or decreasing is natural to oil drilling and refining firms. Other forms of risk are not wanted, but cannot be avoided without hedging. Someone who has a shop, for example, expects to face natural risks such as the risk of competition, of poor or unpopular products, and so on. The risk of the shopkeeper's inventory being destroyed by fire is unwanted, however, and can be hedged via a fire insurance contract. Not all hedges are financial instruments: a producer that exports to another country, for example, may hedge its currency risk when selling by linking its expenses to the desired currency. Banks and other financial institutions use hedging to control their asset-liability mismatches, such as the maturity matches between long, fixed-rate loans and short-term (implicitly variable-rate) deposits.
A hedger (such as a manufacturing company) is thus distinguished from an arbitrageur or speculator (such as a bank or brokerage firm) in derivative purchase behavior.
Example hedge
A stock trader believes that the stock price of Company A will rise over the next month, due to the company's new and efficient method of producing widgets. He wants to buy Company A shares to profit from their expected price increase. But Company A is part of the highly volatile widget industry. If the trader simply bought the shares based on his belief that the Company A shares were underpriced, the trade would be a speculation.Since the trader is interested in the company, rather than the industry, he wants to hedge out the industry risk by short selling an equal value (number of shares × price) of the shares of Company A's direct competitor, Company B. If the trader was able to short sell an asset whose price had a mathematically defined relation with Company A's stock price (for example a call option on Company A shares) the trade might be essentially riskless and be called an arbitrage. But since some risk remains in the trade, it is said to be "hedged."
The first day the trader's portfolio is:
(Notice that the trader has sold short the same value of shares.)
On the second day, a favorable news story about the widgets industry is published and the value of all widgets stock goes up. Company A, however, because it is a stronger company, goes up by 10%, while Company B goes up by just 5%:
- Long 1000 shares of Company A at $1.10 each: $100 gain
- Short 500 shares of Company B at $2.10 each: $50 loss
(In a short position, the investor loses money when the price goes up.)
The trader might regret the hedge on day two, since it reduced the profits on the Company A position. But on the third day, an unfavorable news story is published about the health effects of widgets, and all widgets stocks crash: 50% is wiped off the value of the widgets industry in the course of a few hours. Nevertheless, since Company A is the better company, it suffers less than Company B:
Value of long position (Company A):
- Day 1: $1000
- Day 2: $1100
- Day 3: $550 => ($1000 - $550) = $450 loss
Value of short position (Company B):
- Day 1: -$1000
- Day 2: -$1050
- Day 3: -$525 => ($1000 - $525) = $475 profit
Without the hedge, the trader would have to lost $450 (or $900 if the trader took the $1000 he has used in short selling Company B's shares to buy Company A's shares as well). But the hedge - the short sale of Company B - gives a profit of $475, for a net profit of $25 during a dramatic market collapse.
