Futures and options on agricultural commodities have been seeing phenomenal growth in trading volume in recent years, due to increased global demand and the expanded availability of electronic trading for these products. It is now more important than ever to understand how to incorporate these tools into the management of risk.
This booklet is designed to help participants in the grain and oilseed markets learn how to integrate futures and options into effective hedging strategies. As a self-study guide, it also includes a quiz at the end of each chapter to allow you to test your grasp of the material.
If you’re new to futures and options on futures, the first four chapters will give you a solid foundation. Chapters 5 and 6 include futures and options hedging strategies, both from a buying and selling hedger’s perspective.
We hope you enjoy this booklet and that it answers many of your questions. In addition to reading on your own, your broker should be a primary source of information. The kind of assistance you may get from your broker ranges from access to research reports, analysis and market recommendations, to assistance in fine-tuning and executing your trading strategies. A principal objective of this guide is to better enable you to use such assistance effectively.