Hedging What Is It, And Its Uses In Risk Management
The second of a two part article.
Before I discuss the use of hedging to off-set risk, we need to understand the role and the purpose of hedging. The history of modern futures trading begins in Chicago in the early 1800s. Chicago is located at the base of the Great Lakes, close to the farmlands and cattle country of the U.S. Midwest making it a natural center for transportation, distribution and trading of agricultural produce. Gluts and shortages of these products caused chaotic fluctuations in price. This led to the development of a market enabling grain merchants, processors, and agriculture companies to trade in contracts to insulate them from the risk of adverse price change and enable them to hedge.
The first commodity exchange was the creation of the Chicago Board of Trade, CBOT in 1848. Since then, modern derivative products have grown to include more than the agricultural industry. Products include Stock Indices, Interest Rates, Currency, Precious Metals, Oil and Gas, Steel and a host of others. The origins of the commodity and futures exchange was created to support hedging. The role of...