Question 6 Your Australian company has just made a contract to buy heavy machinery from a Japanese company based in Yokohama. Your company must pay Japanese company 500 million in three months. You have three alternatives to hedge this FX exposure: (a) buying 25-yen call options (contract size is 20 million) at a strike price of AUDS0.00805 per yen. The premium for this call option is 0.010 cents per yen or (b) buying 5 threemonth yen forward contracts (each worth 100 million) from Samurai Bank, which quotes you AUDS0.007959 per yen or (c) buying 10 three-month futures contracts, each worth 50 million (assume no transaction costs and no margin account requirements) at a price of AUDS0.007960 per yen. The current spot rate is 1= AUDS0.007823. You forecast that the highly likely value for the yen in three months is $0.007930, but the yen could go as high as $0.008500 or as low as $0.007550. Using this information, A. Discuss what kind of exposure your company has. Does it matter to remain unhedged for this exposure? Discuss your arguments. B. Your company would like to decide on the contractual hedges and compare the payoffs across the hedging tools available. Calculate your company's gains or losses on the option position, forward position, and futures position if the yen is settled at its highly likely value (must show your workings). Having computed the payoffs of these three hedging tools, which strategy would you recommend and why? [4+6=10marks] Question 6 Your Australian company has just made a contract to buy heavy machinery from a Japanese company based in Yokohama. Your company must pay Japanese company 500 million in three months. You have three alternatives to hedge this FX exposure: (a) buying 25-yen call options (contract size is 20 million) at a strike price of AUDS0.00805 per yen. The premium for this call option is 0.010 cents per yen or (b) buying 5 threemonth yen forward contracts (each worth 100 million) from Samurai Bank, which quotes you AUDS0.007959 per yen or (c) buying 10 three-month futures contracts, each worth 50 million (assume no transaction costs and no margin account requirements) at a price of AUDS0.007960 per yen. The current spot rate is 1= AUDS0.007823. You forecast that the highly likely value for the yen in three months is $0.007930, but the yen could go as high as $0.008500 or as low as $0.007550. Using this information, A. Discuss what kind of exposure your company has. Does it matter to remain unhedged for this exposure? Discuss your arguments. B. Your company would like to decide on the contractual hedges and compare the payoffs across the hedging tools available. Calculate your company's gains or losses on the option position, forward position, and futures position if the yen is settled at its highly likely value (must show your workings). Having computed the payoffs of these three hedging tools, which strategy would you recommend and why? [4+6=10marks]
