As we saw in the chapter, some financial instruments are used primarily to transfer risk. Explain how a bread maker can use a financial instrument to transfer the following risk: the bread maker has the opportunity to provide bread to a local army base. The base figures they will need 10,000 loaves of bread each week, or roughly 500,000 for a year. The problem is the baker must quote a price for the entire year. The baker would really like to have this contract but he realizes that fluctuating input prices (specifically wheat) could result in significant losses.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The baker could quote a price for bread based on today's price and then purchase wheat a futures contract for wheat at today's price, for delivery one year from now. If actual wheat prices do increase the baker will lose money on the actual baking operations but these losses will be offset by the profits he will earn on the wheat futures contract. If wheat prices end up decreasing, he will suffer losses on the futures contract but will offset these by having higher profits from baking. In this case the futures contract accomplishes exactly what it was supposed to do. It transferred the risk of volatile wheat prices from the baker, who otherwise wouldn't accept the opportunity to provide bread at a guaranteed price for a year, to someone who was more willing to accept this risk.