Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/iii/paper-40/6/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 40 6 a Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Normalize and put . Its dynamics are . Bounded volatility makes this stochastic exponential a true martingale on each finite horizon, by the Novikov condition. It also gives a finite second moment: stopping the Itô formula for and applying the Gronwall inequality yields when .
The discounted payoff is thus square-integrable. Define the nonnegative martingaleThe Brownian martingale representation theorem says that every square-integrable martingale in the Brownian filtration has a representation with predictable and . Since and , chooseThen discounted gains satisfy . Consequently is self-financing, nonnegative, and hence an admissible trading strategy. At maturity , proving claim replication at cost .
For minimality, discounted wealth of any admissible self-financing portfolio is a local martingale bounded below, hence a supermartingale by localization and the conditional Fatou lemma. Thus any such replication with initial wealth obeysTogether with the constructed portfolio, this provesThis is Brownian representation replication in a local volatility market. The given drift means that the original probability measure already serves as the risk-neutral measure.
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