Abstract
Most hedges placed in futures markets must be lifted before contract expiration, which necessitates incurring “basis risk.” The focus of this paper is on quantifying such risk as a function of the timing of a hedge, its duration, distance from contract expiration, hedge life, and other market‐observable variables. The development of basis‐risk profiles provides a hedger with estimates of hedging risks that reasonably can be expected before the actual placement of hedges, thus serving as a useful input in the hedging decision.