Risk management through
introduction of futures contracts
in tea
An attempt at solving the
heterogeneity problem
What is a futures contract?
• Commodities are often contracted for
delivery in the future at a fixed price. When
this is done informally, the word forward
contract is used to describe the transaction.
• However, when the transaction is organized
and regulated by a recognized exchange, in a
standard size and delivery period, with an
implicit performance guarantee through the
institution of a clearing house, the same is
called a futures contract in the underlying
asset.
Why the need for such
transactions?
• The reason why such transactions
are made is that the seller is a hedger
and the buyer is a speculator, or, vice
versa
Futures on intangible assets
• Observation of this fact resulted in the
invention of index futures, and futures on
other non deliverable assets, where actual
delivery is not an option (pun intended!).
Examples are S&P index futures where
the stock index is the underlying asset,
crude oil basket futures, where a specified
basket of oil prices is the underlying asset
etc.
What kind of assets lend
themselves to futures trading?
• Since a futures contract is an insurance
related transaction, it stands to reason that
futures contracts on assets with zero or
very low variability might neither be
popular (high trading volume), nor
effective ( a successful hedge).
Conversely, futures contracts on highly
variable underlying assets should be both
popular and effective.
The different kinds of variability
• There are different kinds of variability in
asset prices. This could be random non
cyclical, random cyclical, intra year pattern
cyclical, inter year pattern cyclical, or
monotone trend.
Futures as a hedge vs futures as
an instrument for speculation
• Agricultural commodity futures have been the
means by which a limited number of traders
stabilized future prices and enabled farmers to
finance investments in future crop production.
• However, speculative purchases of index futures
that have no purpose other than to make money for
the speculator, who hold their contracts to drive up
spot prices with the intention not of selling the
commodities in the real market, but of unloading
their holdings onto an artificially inflated market, at
the expense of the ultimate consumer, may have a
profoundly destabilizing effect on the spot market..
Examples of speculation in
futures
• If speculation is the major cause rather than
supply/demand factors for transactions in any
commodity market, spot prices may shoot upin
the short term, but would be expected to fall
dramatically when the market corrects itself.
• As an example, assets allocated to commodity
index trading strategies in the USA increased
from $13 billion to $300 billion between 2003
and 2008 and the prices of the 25 underlying
commodities increased 200% over the same
period.
An idea of the size of speculation
The challenge of devising
futures for tea
• The tea industry unlike commodities like
coffee, cocoa, and rubber, or food crops
like wheat or corn has no precedent
anywhere in the world to drawn upon and
hence the complexity of developing the
framework for a tea futures exchange. In
both the following suggested scenarios,
due approval from the Forward Markets
Commission of the respective country will
have to be obtained.
Why tea futures would be useful
• Tea prices show both random and cyclical
variability. Theoretically, trading futures in tea would
be a useful hedging instrument available to
producers to insure themselves against price risk.
• However, informal systems of entering into forward
contracts with reputed buyers of bulk tea already
exist in the Indian market and for futures contracts
to be used popularly as a hedge, they would have to
offer superior cover compared to the existing
forward booking. For speculators, who would take
the long position in these contracts, the depth and
liquidity of the market would be a crucial
determinant of their popularity.
The magnitude of the problem
• Since tea is heterogeneous both over season and
region, and even intra region depending on the stock
from which harvest was made and the periodicity of
the harvest, it would be impossible to define a
quality for delivery or even for squaring one’s
position.
• The key to establishing a set of successful futures
contracts is to have standardized lots of a given
quality that are easily available for delivery. Tea may
not conform to this criterion and contracts may have
to be tailor made for individual gardens. The
multiplicity of contracts will confound the market
and prevent secondary trading.
Option 1: A classic commodity
futures initiative:
• Damodaran (March 2000), in a report to Tea
Board India, had suggested a framework for
developing commodity based futures contracts
in tea, and had worked on segregating more
than 50 grades on which such contracts could
be traded. He came to the conclusion that such
an initiative was indeed feasible since the spot
market had sufficient volume, turnover and
liquidity, was adequately regulated, operated
under a few centralized umbrellas, and also had
inbuilt quality regulation mechanisms in the
shape of brokers being the unspoken referees.
Our suggestions if we go this
route
• The aim of establishing the contract should not be to
ensure a supply of a specific grade of tea on a
certain date to the buyer of the contract, but rather to
reduce his risk by providing a mechanism to offset
his short position.
• To ensure liquidity, a limited number of well defined
contracts should be offered on grades or baskets of
grades which are sufficiently distinct from each
other. The delivery months should be spread
through the year but should skip those months
where pronounced upward or down ward price
variance for the particular basket/grade is known to
occur.
Further suggestions and some
reservations on option 1
• The contract should be closed out either by actual
delivery or by cash settlement. The goods supplied
under the actual delivery option should be certified
by an agency operating under the aegis of the
futures market organizer, who could be the broker
presently licensed by the auction organizer, who
would have a dual role as the futures exchange.
• The clearing house could be the present auction
settlement bank. The issues of variability of quality if
actual delivery is taken, or the price of the category
of tea if cash closing out is taken will remain as real
hurdles to the smooth functioning of the system.
Option 2: Develop a financial
future on tea:
• The other way would be to have an index
based futures contract where the index
could be an auction average price for a
defined category of tea.
• The great advantage of this would be a
total transparency of the asset price at
closing, and absence of any disputes
regarding quality issues.
Index selection
• The success of this futures market will depend
critically on the selection of the correct index.
• We have a range of possible indices which are
presently available and the desired qualities we
require in our final choice of index are basically as
follows:
– Index has sufficient market depth, in other words, spot
transaction volume
– Index has sufficient random and non seasonal variability.
Overall auction averages generally show lower variance,
and may not be directly suitable
– Perhaps, a medium Assam index could be devised from the
auction prices of a defined set of estates
Index selection continued..
• Intra year weekly average prices vary
more for some categories of tea compared
with others. To elaborate, higher priced
teas have higher variance in weekly
averages than the common teas.
• It also makes sense to have at least two
index futures contracts on offer, since
price behavior of South Indian teas differ
from that of the North.
Characteristics of an ideal index
• More research is needed to determine which
widely traded category has the maximum
random variability. Our index can be then based
upon this specific category of tea, and its weekly
auction average at one of major North Indian
auction centers could serve as the index for the
proposed tea futures contract.
• This financial derivative, if not misused, would
be a useful instrument for both hedgers with
positions in the physical stock of tea as well as
speculators with views that are contrary to those
of the hedger.
Who would manage the futures
market?
• In this scenario, the auction centers and
associations may not be the ideal
organizers of the futures exchange, having
no experience in managing financial
derivatives.
• In India, an established stock exchange
like National Stock Exchange may be
more suitable.
The risk
While index futures designed as suggested
would eliminate structural problems in devising a
tea futures contract resulting from the
heterogeneity of tea, there is some evidence that
such commodity futures may act as a magnet for
large speculative investment, which might result
in medium term abnormal inflationary pressure
on the spot commodity price, followed by a
severe correction, in cases where the real
demand for the concerned commodity is weak.
Prompt continuous corrective action by the
designated watchdog should take care of this
aspect.
Recommendation
• A decision to permit trading in futures
contracts based on a suitable transparent
tea price index at an existing stock
exchange may be taken by the concerned
authorities. The selected exchange could
be authorized to take all downstream
decisions regarding the details of this
contract. The popularity of the contract
could guide the future course of action.