Law of one price

The law of one price requires traded assets or portfolios with the same terminal payoff to have the same earlier price. In a model where every discounted traded price is a true martingale under a common equivalent measure, it follows by taking the conditional expectation of that terminal payoff. With only local martingale prices and a lower-bound restriction on admissible trading strategies, it can fail: the seemingly profitable short position may have unbounded possible losses before maturity.