A Practitioner’s Guide to What a Hedge Costs, What It Saves, and What It Does to Your Cash
Julian R. Sterling
These are the four Excel workbooks that go with the book. Every figure the book prints is
reproduced in them by a live formula rather than a typed constant — move the spot rate, the
volatility, the hedge ratio or the tenor, and every dependent number moves with it. Both yield
curves are bootstrapped from their ten par rates, and each workbook re-prices all ten par bonds
back to one before anything downstream is trusted. Each one ends with a Checks
sheet setting the printed figure beside the computed one: 140 controls in all, every one
green. If a control ever reads FAIL, the workbook is wrong, not the book.
Free to download. No sign-up, no email address, nothing to fill in.
Everything described below is inside it, with the read-me.
The four workbooks
Chapters 1 to 3, 9 and 10
The number that is not a cost
The treasury report's 1,233,698 reproduced first, then dismantled by an
identity: selling dollars forward and selling them spot while funding the gap both produce
106,766,301.76 of sterling in a year, to eight decimal places. If they did
not, there would be a riskless arbitrage. The forward points are the interest differential.
Beside it the three real cost lines in present value over five years — the swap's
2.5 basis points, the currency bid/offer, and the credit charge — totalling
1,542,782 against the reported figure's 5,715,274 on the
same basis. The largest of the three is the credit charge, the only one that is never
invoiced. The swap is then run year by year at the declared path and at the curve's own
implied forwards, where it returns minus 132,801: the dealer's spread, and
nothing else.
The_Cost_of_the_Hedge.xlsx · XLSX · 20 KB
Chapters 4, 5 and 8
A hedge that only hedges for a year
Each of the five years with its struck rate, its forward and its settlement rate, so the sign
of every annual result can be traced to one comparison. Years one and two are negative and
years three to five positive on a path where sterling falls and recovers — and the sheet
shows this is a property of rolling, not of the path.
Then the three policies on the same path and the same company: do nothing, roll twelve months,
lock five years at the outset. A spread of 35,179,321 between best and worst,
more than anything a treasurer can do inside a policy. A tenor switch turns one policy into
another so the spread can be watched opening and closing.
The_Rolling_Programme.xlsx · XLSX · 18 KB
Chapters 6 and 7
The structure nobody priced
Black-76 written out in spreadsheet formulas rather than carried, so the cap and floor can be
re-struck at will. The collar sold as costing nothing transferred 1,577,235 to the
company — the cliche runs the other way, and the point is not that the bank
wins or loses but that nobody priced the structure in either direction.
Then the programme reconducted, under both re-fixing conventions, with the premiums received
and the settlements paid on common dates. And the year-three mechanism: a floor sold at 2,300
re-fixes to 2,731.84 after the price has risen, so the fall back to 2,640
charges the company 2,387,755 on a reduction in its own input cost. Under the
zero-premium convention it is worse, and the sheet computes that too.
The_Collar_Year_by_Year.xlsx · XLSX · 23 KB
Chapters 11 to 17
Two conventions, two opposite answers
The mark-to-market of both hedges at each of the path's dates, with the tenors actually open
and the swap netted against the currency position. Peaks of 43,749,502 before
settlement and 31,000,344 after, against 36,000,000 of
available liquidity. On one convention the five-year policy breaches by 7,749,502; on the
other it has 13.9 per cent of headroom. Neither convention is wrong.
Then a netting switch — one collateral agreement or two — and the rate and currency
shock ladders with their break-evens in closed form: liquidity exhausted at a fall of
25.63 per cent rolling and 7.09 per cent locked. The ratio
between the two policies is printed as the range it actually is, 4.43 to 4.50, and not as the
constant it is convenient to call it.
The_Collateral_Ledger.xlsx · XLSX · 23 KB
Conventions used throughout
Blue text
a hardcoded input — you may edit these
Yellow fill
an input cell; everything else on the sheet is a formula
Black text
a formula — do not overtype these
Checks sheet
the printed figure beside the computed one, with a PASS or a FAIL
Why the checks matter more than the models
A workbook that agrees with a book proves nothing on its own — the author wrote both. What
the Checks sheets do is different: they force the model to reproduce, from a formula, a number
that was printed before the model existed.
On this book the reference model went through four adversarial audit passes before a word
was written, and two of them reversed a conclusion that had already been drafted. A
forward ratio was upside down, so the rolling programme's five-year result changed sign; and a
consumer's option positions had been coded as a producer's, so the collar's direction inverted.
Twelve guards were then added because a mutation test showed the model would print a false
sentence without them — including one that refuses to print any sentence claiming a movement
the model does not compute.
The last pass found no wrong figure at all. What it found were sentences that were true when they
were written and false when they were read.
Opening the files
The workbooks open in Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Google Sheets and Numbers. They use
no macros and no add-ins, so nothing needs to be enabled or trusted. If your spreadsheet asks
to update links on opening, decline — there are none.
Closing the DealTwo defensible bridges 20.70 million apart, a peg worth 7.00 million, and the six choices that remove 6.60 of a 12.00 earn-out.
CMBS and CRE CLOsWhere the loss actually lands, from appraisal reduction to realised severity, and what the B-piece is really being paid for.
How to Read a Commercial LeaseThe three refinements chapter 19 names and never performs, and the renewal rate below which the mark-to-market is worth nothing.
How to Read a Credit AgreementWhere the default actually comes from, the cure that costs 5.5 times the other, and the capacity nobody adds up.
How to Read a Real Estate Loan AgreementThe cure ratio in closed form, the four-point window in which the cheap cure works, and the cure sized to the wrong threshold.
Office Real EstateA six per cent yield that returns 3.2 per cent once the re-letting cycle is paid for, and the headline-to-net-effective rent arithmetic.
Private Equity Real EstateBoth worked waterfalls to the dollar, the two capital stacks, and the arithmetic of the promote made changeable.
Private Markets PerformanceThirty-one of the thirty-three figures chapter 19 publishes reproduce exactly — and the two that do not are named rather than quietly adopted.
Raising a Real Estate FundThe chapter 17 funnel run on a calendar — when the first close actually lands, and why more travel does not help.
Real Estate FinanceFour people look at one building and reach four numbers; the lender is whole only above 105,109,489, twelve per cent below today’s value rather than forty.
Real Estate Financial ModelingProperty, development and fund models built line by line, and the modelling test worked end to end.
Real Estate Fund ManagementThe waterfall of 6.11, the build-to-core of 8.7 and the proceeds gap, reproduced as live formulas rather than asserted.
REIT Analysis and ValuationFFO of 532.0, AFFO of 381.0, net asset value and dividend safety — every figure a formula you can change.
Retail Real EstateThe occupancy cost of every unit in a centre, the sixteen per cent of the rent roll no tenant can sustain, and the right-size-convert-or-hold decision priced.
Sale and LeasebackA €179.5 million transaction end to end, with rent cover measured on the entity that actually signs the lease.
Self-Storage Real EstateThe cohort engine behind a 590-unit store, and the rate increase on existing customers priced against the move-outs it causes.
The Fund Finance ProfessionalChapter 8 builds the reported-to-eligible NAV bridge; chapter 9 computes every ratio without it. Two points at every state — and what a subscription line does to the IRR.
The Growth Equity InvestorWhat a pro rata cheque really costs, and the band where defending your ownership loses money.
The Private Credit InvestorThe two coverage ratios are not measured on the same thing: the erosion is 47.7 per cent, not the 28.7 the headline implies.
The Private Equity Fund Controller PlaybookThe book defines IRR, DPI, RVPI and TVPI, tells you to update them at the exit, and prints not one value. Computed: a 1.833× deal inside a fund at 0.892 TVPI.
The Venture Capital AssociateWhat defending a position costs, and how many companies a reserve pool actually defends.
Financial Risk ManagementA fund inside every limit that cannot meet a redemption — and the number that decides it is the one with no currency attached.
Business ValuationThree advisers land 26.8 per cent apart on one company, and the whole gap turns out to be 1.96 points of perpetual growth.
Quantitative FinanceThree models agree to a quarter of one per cent about a number that one unobservable input moves a hundred and three times as much.
Asset ManagementFour people quote four returns for one mandate, all correct and 2.7017 points apart — forty-eight times the manager’s net skill.
Alternative InvestmentsA manager reports 13.29 per cent and the endowment earns 6.26 — both correct, and only a third of the advertised advantage arrives.
Credit AnalysisFour defensible EBITDAs on one borrower give leverage from 3.19x to 6.47x — and the add-back argument is fifty times the covenant headroom.
Venture CapitalOne company out of twenty-eight returns 56.7 per cent of the fund, and half the capital goes in after the decision — at half the return.
Machine Learning for FinanceFive people quote the accuracy of one credit model, all five are right, and the number that decides how much money it makes is none of them.
Commercial Real Estate InvestingThe equity earned 8.6647 per cent and the investor received exactly 8.0000 — the preferred return, and nothing above it.
Mergers and AcquisitionsThe board paper says the deal creates 13,436,667 of value. The arithmetic says it destroys 17,530,855. Nobody is lying.
Treasury ManagementFive cash balances for one company, all correct and 145,600,000 apart — and the revolver that is two-thirds of the liquidity leaves at a revenue fall of 8.4127 per cent.
Financial Planning and AnalysisRevenue 3.0190 per cent above budget and operating profit 16.3209 per cent below it, in the same quarter, with every figure correctly stated.
Energy TradingA position report that is 91.7031 per cent hedged and correctly computed, on a book that is short 2,542,000 MWh — and a margin call of 198,400,000 the next morning.
Construction Cost ControlA contract sum of 26,301,102 became a final account of 29,153,363 on the building that was drawn — and 85.8 per cent of what was lost was knowable on the day it was signed.
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