Project 3
Project 3
Prior to working on the project please view “Risk Management” videos (available in “Course Videos” folder)
Please use Excel to construct the plots and perform your computations
You work as a broker for a US company that imports European foods into the US. You just signed a deal with an Italian producer of olive oil. Under the terms of the contract, in three months you will receive 405,000 liters of olive oil in exchange for 900,000 euros. You are going to sell the entire shipment of olive oil to Fresh Foods Market at $3 /liter. All cash flows occur in exactly three months
a. Plot your profits from the deal (on the Y axis) as a function of the spot exchange rate in three months (on the X axis). Consider values of the exchange rate in the range [$0.95/€ to $1.4/€]. Label this line “Unhedged Profits.”
The format of your graph should be as shown below:
- Suppose the one-year forward exchange rate is $1.10/€ . Describe how you could hedge the risk of the contract. In the figure you used for part a) plot your total expected profits from the olive oil with forward hedge as a function of the exchange rate in three months. Label this line “Forward Hedge.” Define position of the “forward Hedge” line precisely on the graph
- Suppose that instead of using a forward contract, you consider using options. Suppose there are foreign exchange (euro) options available with exactly three months to expiration and a size of one euro. A three-month call option to buy one euro at a strike price of $1.1/€ is trading for $0.06/€. Similarly a three-month put option to sell 1 euro at a strike price of $1.1/€ is trading for $0.06/€. How would you hedge your profits from the olive oil deal using option contracts? Which type of options would you use – put or call? Explain. Please be specific
- Compute profits from the deal with the options hedge for spot exchange rate in three months from the range [$0.95/€ , $1.4/€] (do not disregard options cost).
- In the figure from parts (a) and (b), plot profit profile from the olive oil deal with the options hedge as a function of the exchange rate in three months.
- If you are concerned that the deal might fall through (due to new covid restrictions or due to disruptions related to current geopolitical events), and there is no oil shipment, which hedge would you choose? Explain. Plot profit/loss profile with the chosen hedge in the event of the deal falling through
- Research markets for options and futures Euro contracts.
- List available expiration times
- What are the values of the strike price?
- What are the sizes of the contracts available?
- What are the values of the options premium? Do you notice any relationship between the value of the premium and the strike price (for the options with the same expiration time)? Between the value of the premium and the time to expiration (for the options with the same strike price)?
- What are the margin requirements?
- What difficulties you would face when hedging your olive oil transaction with aforementioned contracts? Would complete and perfect hedge be available? Explain