No, we're not talking UGA, although I am looking forward to a funky college football season.
In this case, we're talking about airlines hedging their fuel costs via oil futures. That works fine when oil prices stay high, but when oil prices come down, hedgers are stuck paying for high-priced oil. Delta took a $155m hit in the last quarter on hedges.
I recall two cases where hedges like this were costly. Locking in electricity prices at peak levels cost CA billions and Grey Davis his job when prices dropped back, sticking the Grey Gentleman with a hedge loss. Another had ethanol maker VeraSun hedging corn prices when they were causing riots in Mexico; once the market adjusted and corp prices came back down, VeraSun was stuck with their high hedge prices and proceeded to go CH11, since their peers were unhedged and could afford to drop prices.
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