The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Optimal Hedging in Futures Markets with Multiple Delivery Specifications

Published: 09/01/1987   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1987.tb03924.x

AVRAHAM KAMARA, ANDREW F. SIEGEL

Nearly all futures contracts allow delivery of any of several qualities of the underlying asset. Consequently, the price of the futures contract is associated more with the price of the expected cheapest deliverable variety than with the price of the par‐delivery variety. The delivery specifications introduce a delivery risk for every hedger in the market. We derive the optimal hedging strategies in these markets. Their hedging effectiveness is evaluated for wheat futures contracts in Chicago. Hedging optimally would have significantly reduced the variance of the rates of return on hedges while yielding similar mean returns.


The Efficient Use of Conditioning Information in Portfolios

Published: 12/17/2002   |   DOI: 10.1111/0022-1082.00351

Wayne E. Ferson, Andrew F. Siegel

We study the properties of unconditional minimum‐variance portfolios in the presence of conditioning information. Such portfolios attain the smallest variance for a given mean among all possible portfolios formed using the conditioning information. We provide explicit solutions for n risky assets, either with or without a riskless asset. Our solutions provide insights into portfolio management problems and issues in conditional asset pricing.