CASE STUDY 1 HEDGING WITH STOCK INDEX FUTURES
See data tables below: You hold 50 million shares of Fund A. To hedge against losses due to systematic risk (meaning setting target beta to 0), you plan to use stock index futures for hedging. The stock index futures under consideration are S&S 500 index futures and SUP 300 index futures, each point worth $250.
a. Write the formula for the optimal number of hedge contracts.
b. Calculate the daily average return of the three securities.
c. Calculate the correlation of returns between the fund and futures, and select the appropriate futures (hint: choose the futures with a higher correlation coefficient).
d. Calculate the beta of Fund A.
e. Determine the number of futures contracts for optimal hedge.
f. Use the data from May to back-test the price movements of the hedged and unhedged portfolios.
This is an individule work, write your answer in a word document and hand in with a printed copy . You can use Excel or a programing language to do the calculation, but please attach the critical data (if not all) in the word document.