Hedge Timing

Deck: 

There’s no magic in dollar cost averaging.

Fortnightly Magazine - May 2012
This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.

A new approach to hedging commodity price risk appears to be gaining popularity in the natural gas and electric utility industries. This new approach, dubbed “dollar cost averaging” (DCA) by analogy to a popular personal investment strategy, appears to offer substantial cost savings over alternative hedging approaches. However, evaluating DCA critically, to locate the source and assess the magnitude of its apparent cost advantages, reveals that DCA doesn’t reduce commodity costs compared to time-averaging—a widely used and simpler approach to hedging commodity price risks.

Like the audience at a magic show, proponents of DCA have fallen prey to misdirection; because they focus on one component of commodity procurement costs, they fail to see another. Specifically, they miss the fact that the hedge cost advantage of DCA is fully offset by the balancing cost disadvantage—i.e., the cost of covering remaining commodity requirements through other forward or spot market transactions. Furthermore, not only does DCA fail to provide a cost advantage, it’s less effective than time averaging at mitigating extreme market price outcomes.

This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.