Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2009/iii/paper-32/3/solution

On a fixed finite horizon, a self-financing strategy consists of predictable stock holdings , integrable against the price processes, and a bank account holding . Its wealth and gains satisfy
An admissible trading strategy has discounted wealth bounded below by a deterministic constant throughout the horizon. With the bounded short rate in this part, an undiscounted deterministic lower bound is equivalent after adjusting the constant. An arbitrage is an admissible zero-initial-cost strategy with almost surely and .
Put and define the market price of risk
The bounded coefficients and bounded inverse make bounded. Define the stochastic exponential
The Novikov condition states that makes this exponential a true martingale with expectation one. Boundedness verifies the condition. Therefore defines an equivalent probability measure. The Girsanov theorem states that
is a -dimensional Brownian motion under . Substituting into the asset equations gives
Thus is an equivalent local martingale measure. The sufficient direction of the fundamental theorem of asset pricing says that such a measure excludes arbitrage among admissible self-financing strategies. Here the reason can be seen directly: is a local martingale under , and its lower bound makes it a supermartingale. Consequently implies , incompatible with the nonnegative terminal payoff of an arbitrage. Therefore the bounded-inverse market has no arbitrage.
For the requested law of one price counterexample, take a broader continuous-time local-martingale model on . Let be a Brownian motion, let , and set for . Define
The given hitting-time fact gives almost surely. The corresponding physical hitting time is , so reaches one and then stays one. In particular it is continuous at maturity and .
For a rigorous closed-horizon localization, stop additionally when hits , or at if it never does. The stopped process is Brownian motion stopped on first exiting and subjected to the deterministic clock; it is a bounded martingale, including at . The stopping times increase to , since every Brownian path on the finite random interval has a finite maximum. Thus is a positive local martingale on the whole horizon. With the time-changed Brownian filtration, the original probability measure is an equivalent local martingale measure. The admissible-wealth supermartingale argument above proves no admissible arbitrage.
Nevertheless while , so the law of one price fails. Shorting one share and buying two units of cash has zero initial cost and terminal gain one, but its wealth is . It has no deterministic lower bound: for every , the probability of Brownian motion hitting before is , obtained by optional stopping of the bounded stopped Brownian motion. That apparently profitable strategy is therefore inadmissible. The counterexample deliberately uses a strict local martingale; the bounded-coefficient class in the first part has true discounted asset martingales and does satisfy the law of one price.

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