Question

A U.S. firm isreceiving 185m JPY in 3 months’ time. JPY Futures are available on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) with a contract size of 12,500,000 JPY and currently trade at 0.009502 JPY/USD. The contract maintenance margin is 3600 USD with an initial margin of 110% of the maintenance margin.

Describe the firm’s FX spot market currency exposure (long/short, size of exposure) before hedging.

b) Describe how this firm would hedge its position using futures contracts.

c) How many contract positions on the CME should be taken if the goal is to minimise the

firm’s exposure to risk?

d) What will be the initial futures cash flow required (amount and currency)?

e) Assuming that the exposure and contract maturity dates are the same, what is the expected

total (Physical + Hedge) net USD cashflow? (You may ignore the time value of money and you may assume that the Unbiased Expectations Hypothesis holds)

Answer 1

PT a FX Spot market currency exposure = Currency amount * Exchange rate

                                                                        =185 mJPY*0.009502JPY/USD i.e. 1.75787 m USD

PT b US firm will receive JPY in 3 month time so US firm is afraid of USD falling i.e. JPY rising so firm should hedge YEN by shorting future contract.

PT c Number of contract = Exposure /Lot size

                                             =185 m/12.5m i.e.14.8m or 14 Future contract short

PT D Initial cash flow consist of initial margin and maintenance margin .

Initial margin =110% of maintenance margin

maintenance margin = 3600per contract.

Initial margin per contract =110% *3600 i.e.3960

Total margin per contract = 3600+3960 i.e. 7560

Total margin for 14 contract =7560*14 i.e.USD 105840