The Risk Of Individual Investments

III. The higher the standard deviation, the less certain the rate of return in any one given year.

The Balance of Payments in India mainly relies on services exports, remittances and the course capital flows, both foreign direct investments (FDI) and FII. It is very essential that all market participants, such as banks and other intermediaries be provided with the wherewithal so that they can undertake a risk management in a way that is scientific. One of the ways to access domestic, foreign exchange markets is to hedge on the underlying foreign exchange exposures. In addition, the facilities that are available as the booking of forward contracts were included in the domestic forex market in order to evolve and acquire volumes and depth (Sumanth, 2012). Some of the newer hedging instruments have put in place swaps and options in the

The idea of “risk” is used in many fields and industries. There has been large efforts made towards the understanding of risk. Since, risk varies so much depending on the field of study, the need for learning about it is warranted. As can be imagined, the importance of risk in a market economy is crucial. In the 1990s, JP Morgan made the Value at Risk (VaR) a central component of its work efforts (Cecilia-Nicoleta, Anne-Marie, & Carmen-Maria, 2011).

Futures are a contract or legal agreement, where an investor agrees to purchase a certain amount of a physical good or financial asset on a specific date for a set price.

Currency exposures assume many forms: they can be assets or liabilities; current or committed; contracted or merely forecast; they can be for trade, investment or balance sheet purposes. Cases of currency exposure can emerge at any point along the value chain, with various repercussions. Each requires a transfer of funds, and for each the rate of exchange is uncertain. Examples of different types of currency exposures are presented below.

There are lots of methods to solve the changes in foreign currency and interest rates issue, however, derivative financial instruments are the major tunes Nike enterprise has used to tackle this issue. Despite the fact that this approach does not wipe out comprehensively the risk of foreign exchange, Nike enterprise still utilize it to minimize or delay the negative consequences. Specifically, the derivative financial instruments comprise embedded derivatives, interest rate swap, and foreign exchange forwards and options contracts (Nike annual report, 2014).

Analyze the derivatives market and determine the use of derivatives to efficiently manage investment risks in an investment portfolio.

Then, we took into consideration only a fluctuation of the exchange rate. The scenarios that we analyzed covers different positions of the dollar against the euro: weak dollar (USD 1,48/EUR), stable dollar (USD 1,22/EUR) and strong dollar (USD 1,01/EUR). Different coverage of costs with hedging was also introduced in the analysis. The three main policies are of not hedging, 100% hedging with forward contracts and 100% hedging with options.

This report is created with a discussion over several important international finance topics for instance, interest-rate parity, currency risk management, regarding description on Carrefour S.A. financing policies as well as hedging strategy. Additionally, we also discussed on which currency Carrefour should issue its 10-year, 750 million euro, annual coupon bond, its foreign currency risk exposure and a possible hedging decision in dealing with any or all of the identified risks.

Nestlé S.A. is a Swiss company and owns a prestigious position being the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness group (Nestlé, 2016). According to its annual report (2015), this company is exposed to many risks caused by movements in foreign currency exchange rates, interest rate and market prices. The foreign exchange risk comes from transactions and translations of foreign operations in Swiss Francs (CHF). The interest rate risk faces the borrowings at fixed and variable rates. The market price risk comes from commodity price and equity price. The former risk arises from world commodity market for the supplies of coffee, cocoa beans, sugar and others. The later risk arises from the fluctuations of the prices of investments held. (Nestle annual reports, 2015). Thus, financial derivatives instruments are used by this multinational corporation in order to hedge these risks.

…forward contract to hedge 50% of the exposures for months one through six and options to hedge 50% of the exposures for months seven through twelve. In general, at least 25% of the combined hedge on a particular currency is to be held in options in order to assure flexibility…

* Stock prices change only when there is new info- cannot be predicted ahead of time

As indicated by the case study S&P 500 index was use as a measure of the total return for the stock market. Our standard deviation of the total return was used as a one measure of the risk of an individual stock. Also betas for individual stocks are determined by simple linear regression. The variables were: total return for the stock as the dependent variable and independent variable is the total return for the stock. Since the descriptive statistics were a lot, only the necessary data was selected (below table.)

So the investor will invest 32.58860806% of the investment budget in the risky asset and 67.41139194% in the risk-free asset.

In their research study, Souder & Myles (2010) identify that risk is chiefly fundamental to investing. Böhringer & Löschel (2008) further add that there is no discussion of returns or performance that is deemed meaningful in the absence of at least some mention of the involved risk. However, the trouble for investors, who have just entered into the marketplace, involves the process of figuring where risk really lies, as well as what the difference between the various levels of risks. Relating to the manner, in which risk is fundamental to investments, a significant number of new