This is Money – Hedge will be one of those words forever linked to the great financial crisis of 2008. The hedge funds were supposedly money-minting schemes whereby fantastically intelligent financial whiz kids write fantastically complex programmes to ensure they make a profit whatever the direction of the market.
That many hedge funds were spectacularly successful in the 2003-7 bull run and then spectacularly crashed in the current bear market indicates "hedging" may have had little bearing.
Hedging is rife too in the energy markets, widely used to attempt to control industrial costs and nowhere more starkly than in the aviation fuel market.
