Hedging price risk when no direct hedge vehicle exists: the case of silicon

Silicon has wide applications in the electronic, ferrous foundry and chemical industries but does not possess a well-developed forward or futures market. Here we investigate potential candidates to cross-hedge silicon's price risk. Our results show that a proxy for a newly introduced Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) ferrous contract, iron and steel scrap, explains close to 60% of the variation in silicon price changes. Estimated Generalized Least Squares (EGLS) estimations of hedge ratios are shown to produce more consistent hedge-effectiveness over OLS counterparts. Thus, it appears that the ferrous contract could fulfil this role.