What is Hedging?

When it comes to investment, hedging is not a strange word. Though many of you have already heard of the name hedging, not many of you may be able to explain what hedging is. Without the ability to explain the term, I guess you have not yet participated in the hedging world, which actually can be useful to protect yourself. Let us now understand it.

As we have mentioned, hedge is a tool to reduce investment risk which is inherent to every investment. You can think in a way that hedge is sort of an insurance for your investment. When the risks you are facing are getting bigger and bigger, you are more in need of hedging. There are many different types of hedging that suits your different type of investments. You can find foreign currency swap, interest rate swap, futures hedging and hedging for stock price as the common ones.

You have to remember the golden rule that hedging is not a way to help you earn more money. It is a tool to help you reduce the risk. By that, you will invest in two different products that are negatively correlated. The risk is reduced by the offset between the gain and the loss from each of the investment. Or, when investment A is in a gain position, investment is on the contrary a loss position. The gain offsets the loss.

When the risk is higher, the earning or opportunity is likely to be higher, too. But, by hedging, the risk is reduced, therefore, the highest possible earning is also reduced. That means, when you are gaining on investment A, the gain is reduced by the loss in investment B. On the other hand, if you are making loss on investment A, the loss is reduced by gain in investment B.

Let me give you an example on interest rate swap. If you have a loan from the bank of $100,000 and the bank is charging you a floating interest rate (or market rate). You biggest concern must the increase in interest rate (“interest rate risk”), which than you have to pay more interest. To reduce the interest rate risk, you can enter into an interest rate swap with the bank.

As there is a tradeoff between risk and possible earnings, you can choose to what extend that you wish to reduce your risk. That means, you can enter into a $50,000 interest rate swap to minimize your risk or you can enter into a $25,000 interest rate swap to reduce part of your risk. For simplicity, we now assume you have entered into a $50,000 interest rate swap that you receive interest on floating rate.

When the interest rate increases, you have to pay more interest for your loan, but you receive more interest income on the other hand. If interest rate decreases, you can pay less interest for your loan, but your interest income also decreases. For explanation, hedging can be simple. But in real case, you may not find the hedging is such a perfect hedge that all your risks can be completely eliminated.