Question: A company has a $36 million portfolio with a beta of 1.2. The futures price for a contract on the S &P 500 index expiring next month is equal to $900. Futures contracts can be traded on 250 times the index. The risk free rate is 6% per annum and dividend yield for the index is 39%. What trade is necessary to achieve the following:
- Eliminate all systematic risk in the portfolio for the next month.
- Reduce the beta to 0.9
- Increase beta to 1.8
Assuming you follow a hedging strategy aiming to eliminate all systematic risk, what do you expect the hedge effectiveness to be if S & P 500 is equal to $1000 in a month? Assume that during that time the value of your portfolio went up by 17%.