Pricing and Hedging in the Freight Futures Market

Abstract

In this article, we consider the pricing and hedging of single route dry bulk freight futures contracts traded on the International Maritime Exchange. Thus far, this relatively young market has received almost no academic attention. In contrast to many other commodity markets, freight services are non-storable, making a simple cost-of-carry valuation impossible. We empirically compare the pricing and hedging accuracy of a variety of continuous-time futures pricing models. Our results show that the inclusion of a second stochastic factor significantly improves the pricing and hedging accuracy. Overall, the results indicate that the Schwartz and Smith (2000) two-factor model provides the best performance.

Keywords: Freight Futures, Hedging, Shipping Derivatives, Imarex