Lawrence,
Itzik Ben-Gan has an article in the latest edition (June 2010) of SQL Server Maganzine that is about indexing for Row_number/Over/Partition by
So he thinks that “indexing guidelines are to have the ranking ordering columns in the index key list, either in specified order or exactly reversed, plus include the rest of the columns from the query in the INCLUDE clause”
So you should probably create an index on hfv_hedge_rel_id, reporting_date
HIH
Henrik Staun Poulsen