Jonathan Reiss

Does Hedging Make You A Chicken?

Excellent article except for some of the "bad news" and "really bad news". The 'bad news" is that you can't trade futures longer than 1 year. This is true TODAY but next week (Sept. 17th to be exact) 5-year futures will start trading.

The "really bad news": he says that a major drawback is that the hedge uses futures contracts and so you need a futures account to trade them. While futures are unfamiliar to many people, and are not right for everyone, opening a futures account is not a lot harder than opening an account to trade stocks. There are brokers listed on the CME housing web site www.cme.com/trading/pr... and also mentioned in the article who are quite familiar with trading housing futures.

Jonathan Reiss
Analytical Synthesis
market-maker in housing futures