On May 1 a firm anticipates the purchase of 10,000 barrels of jet fuel in 3-month. The firm uses 3-month crude oil futures contracts to hedge its jet fuel price risk. The correlation between the change in spot price of jet fuel and the change in 3-month crude oil futures price is 0.92. The volatility of change in spot price of jet fuel is 0.49. The volatility of change in crude oil futures price is 0.54. Contract size is 1000 barrels. Maintenance margin is $3200/contract; initial margin is 110% of the maintenance margin.

1. How many crude oil futures contracts does the firm need to hedge the jet fuel price risk? Long or short? Please explain. (4 points)
2. Assume you are entering into futures contracts on May 1 with futures price of $54.44/barrel based on your hedging strategy in (a). The following table provides you futures price information between May 1 and May 5. What is the firms margin account balance after May 5? (6 points)

	OPEN	HIGH	LOW	SETTLEMENT
05/01	54.91	55.26	54.58	54.76
05/02	51.99	53.74	51.64	53.55
05/03	52.15	53.25	51.93	52.20
05/04	52.65	53.58	52.04	52.34
05/05	52.76	53.30	51.85	52.85