Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Reinforcement Learning For Dynamic Futures Hedging, Evan Bullard

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper focuses on oil hedging using near month crude oil futures. Hedging may allow a firm to reduce risks and focus on areas of comparative advantage. Hedging requires a firm to estimate ex-ante the correct hedge ratio. The portfolio optimization framework allows for OLS to be applied to the estimation of a hedge ratio. Reinforcement Learning is another method available to hedgers to estimate a hedge ratio. Three strategies using econometric tools and one using Reinforcement Learning are estimated and tested against 2019 oil price data.

Derivatives Use And Risk Taking: Evidence From Alternative Mutual Funds, Alyse Mcalpine

Financial Analyst

I provide new empirical evidence on the effect of derivatives usage on the risk and performance of a group of mutual funds mimicking hedge fund strategies, namely alternative mutual funds (AMFs). Using data on a sample of 914 AMFs from Morningstar during 2002-2017, I show that while the use of derivatives does impact the performance of AMFs, it significantly increases AMFs’ total and idiosyncratic volatilities, even after we control for various fund characteristics. This positive relation between the use of derivatives and the risk-taking of AMFs is particularly strong during the crisis period, and Bear Market, Long-Short Credit, Managed Futures, …

Hedging Exchange Rate Risks, Godwill George Wanga

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Risks associated with fluctuating exchange rates affect investment cost and investor profitability. Approximately 50% of firms in emerging markets have significant exposure to fluctuating exchange rates. Grounded in principal-agent theory (PAT), the purpose of this case study was to explore hedging strategies to mitigate risks of fluctuating exchange rates. The population comprised a census sampling of 12 bank hedgers (risk managers and controllers) in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, East Africa. Data collection involved semistructured interviews, casual observations of the work environment, and analysis of reports including risk management, internal control, and compliance policies. Data were analyzed by coding and …

Ethanol Energy Futures: Identifying Hedge Ratios, Cointegration Equations And Price Bubbles, Sergio Garcia

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Ethanol has been the subject of intense debate following the adoption of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) which established that the gasoline supply in the United States (U.S.) must contain 10% ethanol. The subsequent increase in the production of ethanol since 2005 has had an effect on the prices of corn, ethanol, and gasoline. This work seeks to identify hedging ratios using dynamic multivariate GARCH to best identify hedging opportunities in a newly developed futures market. In addition, Cointegration and Vector Error Models are used to identify relationships in price movements between ethanol futures, spot prices and related …

Essays On Earnings Quality: Evidence From Net Share Issue, Put Option Sales, And Hedging, Jagadish Dandu

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There are three essays in this research. The main objective of the research is to extend the literature in corporate finance by investigating the quality of earnings around corporate events like net share issues, put option sales by firms on their own stock, and hedging commodities by high input cost group of firms.

The first paper is "Does Earnings Quality predicts Net Share Issuance". This paper investigates whether quality of earnings predicts net share issuance by corporations. Pontiff and Woodgate (2008) show that annual share issuance (ISSUE) measure is a better predictor of future cross-sectional returns and we use this …

Essays On Foreign Currency Risk Management, Sungjae Francis Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies on-balance-sheet and off-balance-sheet foreign currency risk management of corporate firms and commercial banks. It is comprised of two essays. The first essay investigates what determines firms’ foreign currency spot net asset positions, derivatives hedging and synthetic hedging positions. We build a model that anticipates a firm’s market timing in currency markets and credit markets according to the exchange-rate return and interest rate differential. Using a unique set of data containing complete foreign currency spot and derivatives positions of Korean exporting firms, we empirically find that currency position-squaring firms have significantly higher firm value. We also find evidence …

Three Essays In Options Pricing: 1. Volatilities Implied By Price Changes In The S&P 500 Options And Future Contracts 2. Price Changes In The S&P Options And Futures Contracts: A Regression Analysis 3. Hedging Price Changes In The S&P 500 Options And Futures Contracts: The Effect Of Different Measures Of Implied Volatility, Jitka Hilliard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this work, I develop a new volatility measure; the volatility implied by price changes in option contracts and their underlyings. I refer to this as implied price change volatility. First, I examine the time series behavior of implied price change volatility and investigate possible moneyness and maturity effects. I compare these characteristics to those of the usual implied volatility measure and the historical volatility of the S&P 500 index. Then, I investigate the performance of the implied price change volatility in a regression setup and in hedging applications. I compare the performance of hedges using daily updated implied price …

Essays On Currency Risk Management, Nehad Elsawaf

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

In recent years a growing number of corporations have committed considerable resources to risk management, indicating the potential for risk management to protect and increase firm value. One can argue that most prior attempts to directly link the value of the firm to its hedging strategies are rather scant. Moreover, several questions with regards to firms' risk management activities remain unanswered. This study consists of two essays dealing with a series of questions regarding corporate risk management in modern U.S. multinational corporations.

In the first essay we first, test the valuation effects of currency hedging policies of firms around extraordinary …

M-Garch Hedge Ratios And Hedging Effectiveness In Australian Futures Markets, Wenling Yang

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study deals with the estimation of the optimal hedge ratios using various econometric models. Most of the recent papers have demonstrated that the conventional ordinary least squares (OLS) method of estimating constant hedge ratios is inappropriate, other more complicated models however seem to produce no more efficient hedge ratios. Using daily AOIs and SPI futures on the Australian market, optimal hedge ratios are calculated from four different models: the OLS regression model, the bivariate vector autoaggressive model (BVAR), the error-correction model (ECM) and the multivariate diagonal Vcc GARCH Model. The performance of each hedge ratio is then compared. The …