Imagine you run a bakery and you know you’ll need a ton of wheat flour in three months. If wheat prices rise sharply, your costs could eat up all your profit. Instead of hoping for the best, you could lock in a price today using futures—turning an uncertain future cost into a known cost. This chapter shows you how to do exactly that: use futures contracts to protect yourself against unwanted price moves, even when the futures contract doesn’t match your exact exposure.