Synthetic commo pos. discounted, should, pos, price

joehogue

when constructing synthetic commo pos, what should be the Face Value of the bond used to get a short synthettic pos? should it be the the fwd price @maturity or the fwd price @ maturity discounted at the borrowing rate?

thanks!
M.

Windjammer

FYI, this was asked in the BSAS 2010 Q9/Part A

PalacioHill

Spot = Forward + Bond

Cash and Carry (buy spot, sell synthetic)

Buy the Spot
Pay interest on loan to buy spot
Sell the forward

Reverse Cash and Carry (buy synthetic, sell spot)

Sell the spot
Take short proceeds and invest in bond
Buy the forward

The loan proceeds are always at the forward amount at delivery.

cityboy

I would worry about synthetic commodity positions for Level IV.

Are you talking about cash and carry or reverse cash and carry transactions? Because in the real world synthetic commodity positions are really created by just buying the futures or doing a commodity swap. Commodities have a storage component so replicating is not like synthetic cash or stock where you just buy or sell a bond.