Chapter 34 - Valuing Forward and Futures Contracts

Introduction

A futures contract is a contract between two parties to exchange assets or services at a specified time in the future at a price agreed upon at the time of the contract. In most conventionally traded futures contracts, one party agrees to deliver a commodity or security at some time in the future, in return for an agreement from the other party to pay an agreed upon price on delivery. The former is the seller of the futures contract, while the latter is the buyer. This chapter explores the pricing of futures contracts on a number of different assets - perishable commodities, storable commodities and financial assets - by setting up the basic arbitrage relationship between the futures contract and the underlying asset. It also examines the effects of transactions costs and trading restrictions on this relationship and on futures prices. Finally, the chapter reviews some of the evidence on the pricing of futures contracts.

e. Currency Futures

In a currency futures contract, you enter into a contract to buy a foreign currency at a price fixed today. To see how spot and futures currency prices are related, note that holding the foreign currency enables the investor to earn the risk-free interest rate (Rf) prevailing in that country while the domestic currency earn the domestic riskfree rate (Rd). Since investors can buy currency at spot rates and assuming that there are no restrictions on investing at the riskfree rate, we can derive the relationship between the spot and futures prices. Interest rate parity relates the differential between futures and spot prices to interest rates in the domestic and foreign market. )1( )1( PriceSpot Price Futures fd, fd, f d R R + + = where Futures Priced,f is the number of units of the domestic currency that will be received for a unit of the foreign currency in a forward contract and Spot Priced,f is the number of units of the domestic currency that will be received for a unit of the same foreign currency in a spot contract. For instance, assume that the one-year interest rate in the United States is 5% and the one-year interest rate in Germany is 4%. Furthermore, assume that the spot exchange rate is $0.65 per Deutsche Mark. The one-year futures price, based upon interest rate parity, should be as follows: Futures Priced,f $ 0.65 = (1.05) (1.04) resulting in a futures price of $0.65625 per Deutsche Mark. Why does this have to be the futures price? If the futures price were greater than $0.65625, say $0.67, an investor could take advantage of the mispricing by selling the futures contract, completely hedging against risk and ending up with a return greater than the riskfree rate. When a riskless position yields a return that exceeds the riskfree rate, it is called an arbitrage position. The actions the investor would need to take are summarized in Table 34.3, with the cash flows associated with each action in brackets next to the action.

PRICING OF FUTURES CONTRACTS

Most futures contracts can be priced on the basis of arbitrage, i.e., a price or range of prices can be derived at which investors will not be able to create positions involving the futures contract and the underlying asset that make riskless profits with no initial investment. The following sections examine the pricing relationships for a number of futures contracts.

3. Marking to Market

One of the unique features of futures contracts is that the positions of both buyers and sellers of the contracts are adjusted every day for the change in the market price that day. In other words, the profits or losses associated with price movements are credited or debited from an investor's account even if he or she does not trade. This process is called marking to market.

a. Perishable Commodities

Perishable commodities offer the exception to the rule that futures contracts are priced on the basis of arbitrage, since the commodity has to be storable for arbitrage to be feasible. On a perishable futures contract, the futures price will be influenced by: (a) the expected spot price of the underlying commodity: If the spot price on the underlying commodity is expected to increase before the expiration of the futures contract, the futures prices will be greater than the current spot price of the commodity. If the spot price is expected to decrease, the futures price will be lower than the spot price. (b) any risk premium associated taking the futures position: Since there is a buyer and a seller on a futures contract, the size and the direction of the risk premium will be vary from case to case and will depend upon whether the buyer is viewed as providing a service to the seller or vice versa. In an agricultural futures contract, where farmers or producers are the primary sellers of futures contracts and individual investors are the buyers, it can be argued that the latter are providing a service to the former and thus should be rewarded. In this scenario, the futures price will be lower than the expected spot price. Futures price = Spot Price - Expected Risk Premium In this type of relationship between futures and spot prices, prices are said to exhibit 'normal backwardation'. In a futures contract, where buyers of the futures contract are industrial users (a good example would be Hershey's, a chocolate manufacturer, buying sugar futures to lock in favorable prices) and the sellers are individual investors, the buyers are being provided the service and the sellers could demand a reward, leading to a risk premium that is positive. In this case, the futures price will be greater than the expected spot price (assuming flat expectations) and futures prices are said to exhibit 'normal contango'. In most modern commodity futures markets, neither sellers nor buyers are likely to be dominated by users or producers, and the net benefit can accrue to either buyers or sellers and there is no a priori reason to believe that risk premiums have to be positive or negative. In fact, if buyers and sellers are both speculating on the price, rather than hedging output or input needs, the net benefit can be zero, leading to a zero risk premium. In such a case the futures price should be equal to the expected spot price. These three possible scenarios for the futures price, relative to the expected spot price, are graphed in Figure 34.3. The empirical evidence from commodity futures markets is mixed. An early study by Houthaker found that futures prices for commodities were generally lower than the expected spot prices, a finding that is consistent with a 'normal backwardation'. Telser and Gray, however, report contradictory evidence from the wheat and corn futures markets.

Price Limits: Effects on Liquidity

The logic of price limits is that they act as a brake on the market and prevent panic buying or selling. Implicit in their use is the assumption that trading can sometimes exacerbate volatility and cause prices to swing to unjustifiably high or low levels. The problem with price limits, however, is that they do not discriminate between rational price movements (caused by shifts in the underlying demand or supply of a commodity) and irrational ones. Consequently, price limits can limit liquidity when investors need it the most and slow down the process of price adjustment. An interesting way to frame the question on price limits is to ask whether you would be willing to pay more or less for an asset that has price limits associated with trading than for an asset without those price limits. The trade off between lower volatility (from restrictions on trading) and less liquidity will determine how you answer the question.

TRADED FUTURES CONTRACTS - INSTITUTIONAL DETAILS

A futures contract is an agreement between two parties. In a traded futures contract, an exchange acts as an intermediary and guarantor, and also standardises and regulates how the contract is created and traded. Buyer of Contract ->Futures Exchange <-Seller of Contract In this section, we will examine some of the institutional features of traded futures contracts.

a. Futures versus Forward Contracts

As described earlier in this section, futures contracts require marking to market while forward contracts do not. If interest rates are constant and the same for all maturities, there should be no difference between the value of a futures contract and the value of an equivalent forward contract. When interest rates vary unpredictably, forward prices can be different from futures prices. This is because of the reinvestment assumptions that have to be made for intermediate profits and losses on a futures contract, and the borrowing and lending rates assumptions that have to be made for intermediate losses and profits, respectively. The effect of this interest rate induced volatility on futures prices will depend upon the relationship between spot prices and interest rates. If they move in opposite directions (as is the case with stock indices and treasury bonds), the interest rate risk will make futures prices greater than forward prices. If they move together (as is the case with some real assets), the interest rate risk can actually counter price risk and make futures prices less than forward prices. In most real world scenarios, and in empirical studies, the difference between futures and forward prices is fairly small and can be ignored. There is another difference between futures and forward contracts that can cause their prices to deviate and it relates to credit risk. Since the futures exchange essentially guarantees traded futures contracts, there is relatively little credit risk. Essentially, the exchange has to default for buyers or sellers of contracts to not be paid. Forward contracts are between individual buyers and sellers. Consequently, there is potential for significant default risk which has to be taken into account when valuing a forward contract.

2. Price Limits

Futures exchanges generally impose 'price movement limits' on most futures contracts. For instance, the daily price movement limit on orange juice futures contract on the New York Board of Trade is 5 cents per pound or $750 per contract (which covers 15,000 pounds). If the price of the contract drops or increases by the amount of the price limit, trading is generally suspended for the day, though the exchange reserves the discretion to reopen trading in the contract later in the day. The rationale for introducing price limits is to prevent panic buying and selling on an asset, based upon faulty information or rumours, and to prevent overreaction to real information. By allowing investors more time to react to extreme information, it is argued, the price reaction will be more rational and reasoned.

c. Stock Index Futures

Futures on stock indices have become an important and growing part of most financial markets. Today, you can buy or sell futures on the Dow Jones, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ and the Value Line indices. An index future entitles the buyer to any appreciation in the index over and above the index futures price and the seller to any depreciation in the index from the same benchmark. To evaluate the arbitrage pricing of an index future, consider the following strategies. Strategy 1: Sell short on the stocks in the index for the duration of the index futures contract. Invest the proceeds at the riskless rate. (This strategy requires that the owners of the index be compensated for the dividends they would have received on the stocks.) Strategy 2: Sell the index futures contract. Both strategies require the same initial investment, have the same risk and should provide the same proceeds. Again, if S is the spot price of the index, F is the futures prices, y is the annualized dividend yield on the stock and r is the riskless rate, the cash flows from the two contracts at expiration can be written. F* = S (1 + r - y)t If the futures price deviates from this arbitrage price, there should be an opportunity from arbitrage. This is illustrated in Figure 34.6. This arbitrage is conditioned on several assumptions. First, it, like the commodity futures arbitrage, assumes that investors can lend and borrow at the riskless rate. Second, it ignores transactions costs on both buying stock and selling short on stocks. Third, it assumes that the dividends paid on the stocks in the index are known with certainty at the start of the period. If these assumptions are unrealistic, the index futures arbitrage will be feasible only if prices fall outside a band, the size of which will depend upon the seriousness of the violations in the assumptions. Assume that investors can borrow money at rb and lend money at ra and that the transactions costs of buying stock is tc and selling short is ts. The band within which the futures price must stay can be written as: ( )( ) ( )( ) The arbitrage that is possible if the futures price strays outside this band is illustrated in Figure 34.7.

FUTURES, FORWARD AND OPTION CONTRACTS

Futures, forward and option contracts are all viewed as derivative contracts because they derive their value from an underlying asset. There are however some key differences in the workings of these contracts.

4. Margin Requirements for Trading

In a futures agreement, there is no payment made by the buyer to the seller, nor does the seller have to show proof of physical ownership of the asset at the time of the agreement. In order to ensure, however, that the parties to the futures contract fulfill their sides of the agreement, they are required to deposit funds in a margin account. The amount that has to be deposited at the time of the contract is called the initial margin. As prices move subsequently, the contracts are marked to market, and the profits or losses are posted to the investor's account. The investor is allowed to withdraw any funds in the margin account in excess of the initial margin. Table 34.1 summarizes price limits and contract specifications for many traded futures contracts as of June 2001. If the investor has a string of losses, because of adverse price movements, his margin will decrease. To ensure that there are always funds in the account, the investor is expected to maintain a maintenance margin, which is generally lower than the initial margin. If the funds in the margin account fall below the maintenance margin, the investor will receive a margin call to replenish the funds in the account. These extra funds that have to be brought in is known as a variation margin. Maintenance margins can vary across contracts and even across different customers. Table 34.2, for instance, shows the relationship between maintenance and initial margins for a sampling of futures contracts from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

EFFECTS OF SPECIAL FEATURES IN FUTURES CONTRACTS

The arbitrage relationship provides a measure of the determinants of futures prices on a wide range of assets. There are however some special features that affect futures prices. One is the fact that futures contracts require marking to the market, while forward contracts do not. Another is the existence of trading restrictions, such as price limits on futures contracts. The following section examines the pricing effects of each of these special features.

b. Storable Commodities

The distinction between storable and perishable goods is that storable goods can be acquired at the spot price and stored till the expiration of the futures contract, which is the practical equivalent of buying a futures contract and taking delivery at expiration. Since the two approaches provide the same result, in terms of having possession of the commodity at expiration, the futures contract, if priced right, should cost the same as a strategy of buying and storing the commodity. The two additional costs of the latter strategy are as follows. (a) Since the commodity has to be acquired now, rather than at expiration, there is an added financing cost associated with borrowing the funds needed for the acquisition now. Added Interest Cost = (Spot Price)((1 + Interest Rate)life of futures contract - 1) (b) If there is a storage cost associated with storing the commodity until the expiration of the futures contract, this cost has to be reflected in the strategy as well. In addition, there may be a benefit to having physical ownership of the commodity. This benefit is called the convenience yield and will reduce the futures price. The net storage cost is defined to be the difference between the total storage cost and the convenience yield. If F is the futures contract price, S is the spot price, r is the annualised interest rate, t is the life of the futures contract and k is the net annual storage costs (as a percentage of the spot price) for the commodity, the two equivalent strategies and their costs can be written as follows. Strategy 1: Buy the futures contract. Take delivery at expiration. Pay $F. Strategy 2: Borrow the spot price (S) of the commodity and buy the commodity. Pay the additional costs. (a) Interest cost = S ((1 + r)t - 1) (b) Cost of storage, net of convenience yield = S k t If the two strategies have the same costs, F* = S ((1 + r)t - 1) + Skt = S ((1 + r)t + kt) This is the basic arbitrage relationship between futures and spot prices. Any deviation from this arbitrage relationship should provide an opportunity for arbitrage, i.e., a strategy with no risk and no initial investment, and for positive profits. These arbitrage opportunities are described in Figure 34.4. This arbitrage is based upon several assumptions. First, investors are assumed to borrow and lend at the same rate, which is the riskless rate. Second, when the futures contract is over priced, it is assumed that the seller of the futures contract (the arbitrageur) can sell short on the commodity and that he can recover, from the owner of the commodity, the storage costs that are saved as a consequence. To the extent that these assumptions are unrealistic, the bounds on prices within which arbitrage is not feasible expand. Assume, for instance, that the rate of borrowing is rb and the rate of lending is ra, and that short seller cannot recover any of the saved storage costs and has to pay a transactions cost of ts. The futures price will then fall within a bound. ( )( ) ( ) ( ) ktr1SF*r1t-S t b t as + +<<+ If the futures price falls outside this bound, there is a possibility of arbitrage and this is illustrated in Figure 34.5.

b. Trading Restrictions

The existence of price limits and margin requirements on futures contract are generally ignored in the valuation and arbitrage conditions described in this chapter. It is however possible that these restrictions on trading, if onerous enough, could impact value. The existence of price limits, for instance, has two effects. One is that it might reduce the volatility in prices, by protecting against market overreaction to information and thus make futures contracts more valuable. The other is that it makes futures contracts less liquid and this may make them less valuable. The net effect could be positive, negative or neutral.

d. Treasury Bond Futures

The treasury bond futures traded on the CBOT require the delivery of any government bond with a maturity greater than fifteen years, with a no-call feature for at least the first fifteen years. Since bonds of different maturities and coupons will have different prices, the CBOT has a procedure for adjusting the price of the bond for its characteristics. The conversion factor itself is fairly simple to compute and is based upon the value of the bond on the first day of the delivery month, with the assumption that the interest rate for all maturities equals 8% per annum (with semi-annual compounding). The following example calculates the conversion factor for a 9% coupon bond with 18 years to maturity.

CONCLUSION

The value of a futures contract is derived from the value of the underlying asset. The opportunity for arbitrage will create a strong linkage between the futures and spot prices; and the actual relationship will depend upon the level of interest rates, the cost of storing the underlying asset and any yield that can be made by holding the asset. In addition the institutional characteristics of the futures markets, such as price limits and 'marking to market', as well as delivery options, can affect the futures price.

How a Future Contract Works

There are two parties to every futures contract - the seller of the contract, who agrees to deliver the asset at the specified time in the future, and the buyer of the contract, who agrees to pay a fixed price and take delivery of the asset. While a futures contract may be used by a buyer or seller to hedge other positions in the same asset, price changes in the asset after the futures contract agreement is made provide gains to one party at the expense of the other. If the price of the underlying asset increases after the agreement is made, the buyer gains at the expense of the seller. If the price of the asset drops, the seller gains at the expense of the buyer.

1. Standardisation

Traded futures contracts are standardised to ensure that contracts can be easily traded and priced. The standardisation occurs at a number of levels. (a) Asset Quality and Description: The type of asset that can be covered by the contract is clearly defined. For instance, a lumber futures contract traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange allows for the delivery of 110,000 board feet of lumber per contract. A treasury bond futures contract traded on the Chicago Board of Trade requires the delivery of bonds with a face value of $100,000 with a maturity of greater than 15 years. (b) Asset Quantity: Each traded futures contract on an asset provides for the delivery of a specified quantity of the asset. For instance, a gold futures contract traded on the Chicago Board of trade requires the delivery of 100 ounces of gold at the contracts expiration. The purpose of the standardisation is to ensure that the futures contracts on an asset are perfect substitutes for each other. This allows for liquidity and also allows parties to a futures contract to get out of positions easily.

Future versus Forward Contracts

While futures and forward contracts are similar in terms of their final results, a forward contract does not require that the parties to the contract settle up until the expiration of the contract. Settling up usually involves the loser (i.e., the party that guessed wrong on the direction of the price) paying the winner the difference between the contract price and the actual price. In a futures contract, the differences is settled every period, with the winner's account being credited with the difference, while the loser's account is reduced. This process is called marking to the market. While the net settlement is the same under the two approaches, the timing of the settlements is different and can lead to different prices for the two types of contracts. The difference is illustrated in the following example, using a futures contract in gold.

Futures and Forward Contracts versus Option Contracts

While the difference between a futures and a forward contract may be subtle, the difference between these contracts and option contracts is much greater. In an options contract, the buyer is not obligated to fulfill his side of the bargain, which is to buy the asset at the agreed upon strike price in the case of a call option and to sell the asset at the strike price in the case of a put option. Consequently the buyer of an option will exercise the option only if it is in his or her best interests to do so, i.e., if the asset price exceeds the strike price in a call option and vice versa in a put option. The buyer of the option, of course, pays for this privilege up front. In a futures contract, both the buyer and the seller are obligated to fulfill their sides of the agreement. Consequently, the buyer does not gain an advantage over the seller and should not have to pay an up front price for the futures contract itself. Figure 34.2 summarizes the differences in payoffs on the two types of contracts in a payoff diagram.