How to Reduce Your Investment Risk
There are many ways to reduce your investment risks like research and analysis. But if you have a risky investment on hand, research and analysis may not be that helpful, you may need something more practical such as hedging. Hedging is a very powerful tool to reduce risk and is using by many different investors and well established enterprises. Let us begin to understand more about hedging.
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.
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.
As you see from the case of investment A and B, you will know that the risk of losing money from investment B is hedged by the gain in investment A. On the other hand, you can think that the gain in investment A is unluckily reduced by the loss in investment B. It is true that the possible earning from the total investment portfolio can be lower is the risk is hedged. It makes sense as the lower the risk, the lower should be the opportunity and earning.
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.
When it comes to such hedging instrument, you have a choice to decide if you want to fully hedge or partly hedge. You can enter into a $30,000 hedge or a full hedge of $60,000. Why you want to do so? It is because there is tradeoff between you risks and opportunities. For simple explanation, I assume you have entered into a $60,000 hedge that you receive interest income.
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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Category: Finance
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