It is the end of May 1997. A cottonseed meal producer in Georgia would have the information about the acreage committed to cotton, and his expected production of cottonseed meal is $1000 tons. On May 28, 1997, cottonseed meal is trading at the price of $197 per ton in Atlanta. The producer expects cottonseed meal prices to be much lower by the end of October 1997. To protect himself against the falling price, the cottonseed meal crusher decides to cross hedge using soybean meal futures. The May 28 soybean meal futures closing price is $280.30 per ton (CBOT; 1 CONTRACT =100 tons of soybean meal). (Caution: it is not soybean futures) The producer decides to place the cross hedge on May 28, 1997. To place the cross hedge, he needs to determine the number of soybean meal futures contracts necessary to offset 1000 tons of cottonseed meal. The cottonseed producer knows the following information.

The correlation between the price changes of cottonseed meal and soybean meal ( =0.84)

The standard deviation of the price change of cottonseed meal (s = $7.2)

The standard deviation of the price change of soybean meal ( f= $60)

1/ Find out the optimal hedge ratio

2/ Compute the optimal number of futures contracts

3/ Compute the measure of hedging effectiveness