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.

Why do you need a hedge? It is because every investment is linked to certain level of risk, a hedge is your insurance that helps you reduce the risks. The higher the risk, the more likely the investors or the companies will enter into hedging. Different types of hedging are available and the common ones are foreign currency swap, interest rate swap, futures hedging and hedging for stock price.

One thing you have to bear in mind is that hedging is not a tool to make money, but a tool to reduce risks. What you are doing in a hedging is to invest in two products that have negative correlation. Say, when investment A is earning money for you, investment B on the other hand will be losing money for you. Your risk to lose money in investment B is hedged by the gain in investment A.

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.

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