1- Suppose that there are no storage costs for crude oil and the interest rate for borrowing or lending is 5% per annum. How could you make money if the June and December futures contracts for a particular year trade at $80 and $86?

2- A trader owns 55,000 units of a particular asset and decides to hedge the value of her position with futures contracts on another related asset. Each futures contract is on 5,000 units. The spot price of the asset that is owned is $28 and the standard deviation of the change in this price over the life of the hedge is estimated to be $0.43. The futures price of the related asset is $27 and the standard deviation of the change in this over the life of the hedge is $0.40. The coefficient of correlation between the spot price change and futures price change is 0.95.

(a) What is the minimum variance hedge ratio?

(b) Should the hedger take a long or short futures position?

(c) What is the optimal number of futures contracts with no tailing of the hedge?

(d) What is the optimal number of futures contracts with tailing of the hedge?

3- The current USD/euro exchange rate is 1.4000 dollar per euro. The six-month forward exchange rate is 1.3950. The six-month USD interest rate is 1% per annum continuously compounded. Estimate the six-month euro interest rate.

4- The December Eurodollar futures contract is quoted as 98.40 and a company plans to borrow $8 million for three months starting in December at LIBOR plus 0.5%.

(a) What rate can then company lock in by using the Eurodollar futures contract?

(b) What position should the company take in the contracts?

(c) If the actual three-month rate turns out to be 1.3%, what is the final settlement price on the futures contracts.

Explain why timing mismatches reduce the effectiveness of the hedge.

5- Company A, a British manufacturer, wishes to borrow U.S. dollars at a fixed rate of interest. Company B, a US multinational, wishes to borrow sterling at a fixed rate of interest. They have been quoted the following rates per annum (adjusted for differential tax effects):

Sterling

US Dollars

Company A

11.0%

7.0%

Company B

10.6%

6.2%

Design a swap that will net a bank, acting as intermediary, 10 basis points per annum and that will produce a gain of 15 basis points per annum for each of the two companies.