Brazilian coffee farmers use future markets in a very restricted way, which does not follow the high optimal hedge ratio observed in minimum variance models. Reasons for the low use are associated to producers and their business characteristics, their preferences about risk management tool and...

This paper analyzed the impact of including commodity futures (arabica coffee, soybean, corn, crystal sugar, ethanol and fed cattle), negotiated at Securities, Commodity and Futures Exchange (BM&FBovespa), in the performance of a diversified portfolio, composed by stocks, bonds, gold and dollar,...

This study investigates the composition of maximum expected utility portfolio, considering stocks, bonds, gold, dollar and agricultural futures contract, between August of 1994 and December of 2007. From the optimal combinations of risk-return (calculated by Markowitz algorithm) and the use of a...

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore the existence of disposition effect among Canadian wheat farmers when marketing their grain. This study examines the question of whether farmers wait too long to price their grain or whether they price it too soon. Design/methodology/approach -The...

The objective of this study is to investigate how professional traders in futures and options markets behave under risk and uncertainty. Our preliminary findings suggest that most traders exhibit concave utility functions for gains and convex utility functions for losses, while their weighting...

We analyze how the introduction of probability distortion and loss aversion in the standard hedging problem changes the optimal hedge ratio. Based on simulated cash and futures prices for soybeans, our results indicate that the optimal hedge changes considerably when probability distortion is...