It is April 15, and a trader is entered into a short position in two soybean meal futures contracts. The contracts expire on August 15, and call for the delivery of 100 tons of soybean meal each. Further, because this is a futures position, it requires the posting of a $3,000 initial margin and a $1,500 maintenance margin per contract. For simplicity, however, assume that the account is marked to market on a monthly basis. Assume the following represent the contract delivery prices (in dollars per ton) that prevail on each settlement date:April 15 (initiation) 173.00May 15 179.75June 15 189.00July 15 182.50August 15 (delivery) 174.25What is the equity value of the margin account on the May 15 settlement date, including any additional equity that is required to meet a margin call?
Regarding the conditions for model selection criteria to demonstrate consistency, which of the following statements is true?I. The most consistent selection criteria with the greatest penalty factor for degrees of freedom is unbiased mean squared error.II. If we consider the fact that the true model may be much more complicated than the models under consideration, then the Akaike information criterion (AIC) measure should be examined.