Through HilltopSecurities Insurance, we have a team of highly experienced Crop Insurance agents specializing in Multi-Peril Crop Insurance (MPCI) and Livestock Insurance. MPCI is offered to producers on over 100 different crops throughout the United States. With deep understanding of agriculture financing and insurance, we provide risk management solutions to help you protect production or a combination of revenue and production offered through the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC).

Over-the-counter (OTC) products have many of the same performance characteristics as exchange-traded futures and options, but have several distinct advantages and considerations.  OTC products include swaps, caps, floors, collars, and other structured derivative products, and can contain enhanced features such as, leverage, cancellation options, barrier options (knock-in, -out) or accumulators, to name a few.  Unlike standardized exchange-trades futures and options, OTC derivatives are executed bilaterally between Eligible Contract Participants (as defined by the CFTC) and are not centrally cleared.  They can be fully customized to fit a client’s specific hedging or investing goals, and as a result, do not have easily obtainable quotations and often require specialist pricing advisory services from firms like HTS Commodities.  Margin/collateral is typically negotiated between parties, not set by an exchange.

Block trades and cleared products are private futures, options or other derivative transactions in listed products meant to serve institutional trading needs.  Like OTC products, these are typically large, negotiated transactions that can be executed between an Eligible Contract Participant (as defined by the CFTC) and a counterparty at any time and at a single price. Like exchange-traded products, they are centrally cleared to reduce counterparty risk.

Structured notes are hybrid securities issued by financial institutions or other entities that consist of a debt obligation and an embedded derivative component tied to an underlying benchmark based on a single stock, equity index, ETF, commodity, or currency. The hybrid nature of structured notes puts them in a category that has performance characteristics similar to both fixed income instruments and the underlying asset (equity, commodity, etc.). Although structured notes may not be suitable for all investors, they may be attractive to certain investors otherwise hesitant to invest directly in equities, currencies or commodities.

Commodity indices and sub-indices are exchange-traded instruments that allow investors to participate in the price performance of a basket of commodities and their individual components.  Indexes are available that provide exposure to a broad range of commodities, exposure to specific commodities sectors (agriculture, energy, precious or industrial metals, etc.), or single commodity exposure (corn, cotton, natural gas, live cattle, etc.). Unlike other financial indexes that might consider stock dividends or interest payments, returns on commodity indexes are directly related to price movements of the underlying commodities or their futures contracts. Recent generations of indices can overlay rules-based active management and potentially add alpha generation to a more traditional market beta allocation.