For a stock with observed dynamics and constant riskless interest rate , the finite-horizon pricing density for Gaussian drift learning with gives . The terminal logarithmic utility condition and the state-price budget constraint give . Replication then gives at every time. The Itô formula for makes the optimal dollar stock fraction . Its finite expected log return follows from finite posterior second moments on finite horizons.
Assume, as in the Bayesian model, that the unknown drift is independent of the driving Brownian motion, with known positive prior precision . Recover the observed signal from the positive stock price:
For a fixed time , the centered observed path is a Brownian bridge independent of : it is independent of the prior and has zero covariance with in their joint Gaussian law. Thus the whole observed history has the same posterior information about as its endpoint. This proves Brownian endpoint sufficiency for a constant drift rather than assuming it.
The likelihood of that endpoint, as a function of , is proportional to . Multiplying by the normal distribution prior and completing the square gives the Gaussian Brownian drift filter
Define the observed innovation process . It is a continuous observed-filtration martingale: for , independence of future noise and the tower property of conditional expectation give , so the conditional mean of its increment vanishes. Its quadratic variation is , since subtracting the finite-variation drift from does not change quadratic variation. The Lévy characterization of Brownian motion makes an observed-filtration Brownian motion. Differentiating the posterior mean gives
Conversely, the last equation determines from with deterministic coefficients and known initial value, and . Thus the observed and innovation filtrations coincide, supplying the natural Brownian information needed for replication. Consequently the observed stock dynamics are . Its observed market price of risk is , and its normalized state-price density solves
The posterior mean is unbounded, so bounded-coefficient Novikov condition reasoning from Question 2 is not available automatically. A direct finite-horizon argument supplies true pricing. Relative to driftless Wiener measure for , the Bayesian mixture has observation density
A law with observation drift instead has density . Therefore
This is the finite-horizon pricing density for Gaussian drift learning. The ratio changes the physical observed law into a genuine probability law, hence has mean one. Indeed, differentiation of the explicit likelihood, using , gives
The Itô formula therefore gives , agreeing with the stochastic exponential above. Under this pricing law the stock drift is .
For logarithmic utility, terminal marginal utility is . The state-price budget constraint and the marginal condition imply and . Since is constant, its conditional-expectation pricing process is constant as well. Thus the entire optimal wealth process is
Indeed, for any other nonnegative admissible terminal wealth , the elementary inequality gives
This directly verifies optimality. Expected candidate log wealth is finite because and its time integral is finite on every fixed horizon. Applying the Itô formula to gives
The observed self-financing portfolio with risky dollar fraction has diffusion coefficient . Matching the coefficients proves the log-optimal investment with Gaussian drift learning rule
The remaining dollars are held in the bank account; the fraction may be negative or exceed one because the question imposes neither short-sale nor borrowing restrictions.