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Everything About Hedging in the Stock Market: For Beginners

Hedging in the Stock Market

To understand hedging in the Stock Market, think of it as an insurance policy. Those who hedge their finances are insuring themselves against the negative effects of an event. However, this does not prevent all negative events from occurring. If, however, you are properly hedged and a negative event occurs, you are less likely to be affected.

Practically speaking, hedging occurs everywhere. Ensuring your home against problems such as fires, burglaries, and unforeseen disasters is one way to hedge against such things.

Hedging techniques reduce the risks that portfolio managers, investors, and corporations are exposed to. Hedging in the stock markets is not as simple as spending some money every year on insurance.

By hedging against investment risk, we mean strategically taking steps to limit the impact of adverse price movement. In other words, hedgers make a trade to offset one investment.

Hedging technically involves making offsetting trades in securities with negative correlations. Regardless, this type of insurance will still cost you in some way.

You can buy put options on XYZ corporation if you own shares of the company and wish to protect your investment from large declines. You must pay the premium to purchase the option.

In other words, reducing risk means reducing potential profits. Therefore, hedging is a technique that aims to reduce potential losses (rather than maximize profits). When you hedge against an investment that makes money, you also generally reduce your potential profit. However, if your hedge was successful and the investment losses money, your loss will be reduced.

Hedging and how it works

Hedging your investments is possible in several ways, and one common method is through derivatives and futures contracts. If a stock’s price decreases drastically, you can buy an out-of-the-money put option to protect yourself. This could be achieved by trading futures on an index to protect your entire portfolio from the effects of market corrections.

You could also short one of the company’s weakest competitors if you want to protect yourself against industry weakness by investing in one company. One can hedge investments in many different ways, so long as you can reasonably expect the value of one asset to rise when the value of another falls.

As a rule of thumb, hedging doesn’t eliminate risk (also referred to as “perfect hedging”). Instead, it is used as a means to lessen the impact of otherwise damaging events. Buying hedging can be compared to purchasing car insurance you will still have to pay a deductible if you ever have to use it and you may lose your car, but it is better than not having it at all. Insurers charge a premium to reduce risk, but if you don’t have any claims, the premiums are lost.

Hedging strategies examples

Hedging strategies come in a variety of forms, and each one is unique. There is no need for investors to use only one strategy, but to combine several for maximum results. The following are some common types of hedging strategies investors should consider:

1. Diversification

You should never put all your eggs in one basket; it’s always a good idea, even in finance. Investors diversify their investments with investments that do not move in a uniform direction. The investment involves holding various assets that are not directly related to one another, so if one declines, other assets may rise.

Suppose a businessman purchases stocks from three companies: a hotel, a private hospital, and a mall chain. If the tourism industry where the hotel operates is negatively affected, the other investments will not be affected since they are unrelated.

2. Arbitrage

Arbitrage is a very simple, but very clever strategy. It involves buying a product and immediately selling it at a higher price in another market, resulting in small but steady profits. Stocks are the most common application of this strategy.

As an example, take a student in his junior year of high school who bought a pair of Asics shoes from a local outlet store for just $45 and sold it to his schoolmate for $70. He is ecstatic to find that it is significantly cheaper than the department store, where it sells for $110. 

3. Average down

As a down strategy, you buy more units of a particular product, even if the cost or price of the product has declined. Investing in stocks often entails this strategy. A share they purchased previously drops in price significantly, so they buy more at the lower price. Therefore, if the price rises to a point where their two buy prices are equal, profits from the second purchase may offset losses from the first. 

4. Holding cash

There is nothing complicated about this strategy. A part of the investor’s money is kept in cash as a hedge against potential losses in investments.

Hedging areas

Commodities, which include things such as oil, gas, meat, dairy products, sugar, and many others, are some areas where hedges may be used.

In addition to securities, there is the area of securities, like stocks and bonds. Investing in securities does not require investors to take possession of anything physical, making them a readily tradable asset. You can hedge currencies, interest rates, and weather as well.

Conclusion

Investing involves risk, which is an essential element, but a precarious one. Regardless of what type of investor one is, having a basic understanding of hedging strategies can lead to a better understanding of how investors and companies protect themselves.

Whatever you decide to do, learning about hedging will help you to have a better sense of how the market works, which will always lead to higher investment returns.

Also Read: Top 10 Movies to Gain Insight of Stock Market

CEO & Editor
I'm Ved Prakash, Founder & Editor @Newsblare Media, specialised in Business and Finance niches who writes content for reputed publication such as Investing.com, Stockhouse.com, Motley Fool Singapore, etc. I'm the contributor of different... news sites that have widened my views on the current happenings in the world.

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