For standard Brownian motion started at zero and exit time from , , stop the two exponential Brownian martingales with parameters and . Their stopped values are bounded by . The optional stopping theorem and dominated convergence theorem give and , where are the discounted upper and lower exit probabilities. Solving gives the displayed formula and . Thus
At , the first ratio has its removable value , and the second equals one. Finiteness of follows from a uniformly positive one-unit-time chance to leave any fixed bounded interval.
The exit time is finite almost surely. Indeed, if the Brownian motion is still in at an integer time, its next unit increment exceeds with a fixed probability independent of the past; on this event it must exit before the next integer time. Consequently . Path continuity gives , and the two exit events partition the probability space up to null sets.
For each real , the exponential Brownian martingale has expectation one. This follows directly from the moment-generating function of a normal distribution and independent increments. At its value is bounded by . Bounded-time optional stopping and then dominated convergence therefore give
Write and . Applying the identity to and yields
For , multiply the first equation by , the second by , and subtract. Solving the resulting system gives
Adding and using the sum formula for the hyperbolic sine gives the asymmetric Brownian interval-exit transform:
At , the printed sine ratio is and needs its removable extension. Dominated convergence as gives
Thus the formulas hold for every real parameter with this endpoint convention. The expectation on the left of the first formula is legible in the original PDF; the converted TeX's nested exponential is an OCR error.
Use the positive exponential Brownian martingale
The strong law for Brownian motion, , makes its exponent tend to and hence . If , then . Part (b) gives, for ,
Thus the maximum is exponentially distributed with rate :
There is no atom at zero, by letting in the tail. This is the infinite-horizon crossing probability for Brownian motion with negative drift.
The price process is a geometric Brownian motion with
Put
and define the equivalent measure on by the exponential Brownian martingale
The Cameron-Martin-Girsanov theorem says that is Brownian motion under . Therefore
so is a -martingale. This is the unique equivalent martingale measure, since cancellation of the single Brownian risk forces the displayed drift shift.
By risk-neutral valuation,
Writing with gives
For , the increment is independent of and is . Hence
Also , so is the exponential Brownian martingale.
For , write . The increment is independent of and is normally distributed with variance . Its moment generating function gives
The process is integrable for every real , so it is the exponential Brownian martingale.
By the Reflection invariance of Brownian motion, is Brownian motion, and the first time reaches is the first time reaches . Part b therefore gives
Now is the exponential Brownian martingale. At , the identity gives , so . The nonnegative stopped martingale therefore loses no mass at infinity and is uniformly integrable. The optional sampling theorem at any stopping time gives
Apply Itô formula to . Its semimartingale decomposition is
The second term is a continuous finite-variation process. Since is assumed to be a local martingale, uniqueness of the semimartingale decomposition makes this term identically zero. Both and are nonzero, so the quadratic variation of is .
The Lévy characterization of Brownian motion now says that is a Brownian motion. Consequently
is a constant multiple of an exponential Brownian martingale. It is therefore a true martingale for every .
For a continuous semimartingale and a function , Itô's formula is
For Brownian motion , . With , the drift cancels:
Consequently
The stochastic-integral representation makes this a local martingale; localization handles unbounded . In fact it is the average of the two positive exponential Brownian martingales and , so it is a true martingale on every finite time interval.