The MGRM Strategy:
MGRM provided their customers with a method that enabled the customer to shift or eliminate some
of their oil price risk. The petroleum market is an environment plagued with large fluctuations in the
price of oil related products. MGRM believed their financial resources gave them the ability to
wholesale and manage risk transference in the most efficient manner. In fact, MGRM's promotional
literature boasts about this efficiency at risk management as a key objective to continued growth in
acquiring additional business. MGRM's hedge strategy to manage spot price risk was to use the frontend
month futures contracts on the NYMEX. MGRM employed a "stack" hedging strategy. It placed
the entire hedge in shortdated delivery months, rather than spreading this amount over many, longerdated,
delivery months because the call options mentioned above were tied to the front month futures
contract at the NYMEX. Studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of using stacked hedging.
MGRM's strategy was sound from an economic standpoint.
The futures contracts MGRM used to hedge were the unleaded gasoline and the No. 2 heating oil.
MGRM also held an amount of West Texas Intermediate sweet crude contracts. MGRM went long in
the futures and entered into OTC energy swap agreements to receive floating and pay fixed energy
prices. According to the NYMEX, MGRM held the futures position equivalent of 55 million barrels of
gasoline and heating oil. By deduction, their swap positions may have accounted for as much as 110
million barrels to completely hedge their forward contracts.[3] The swap positions introduced credit
risk for MGRM.