Arithmetic stock model with constant volatility Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
This additive price model has constant absolute volatility and can take negative stock values. With constant cash interest rate , its market price of risk is . Under an equivalent risk-neutral measure, its drift becomes , so its conditional law is Gaussian with mean and variance . It is distinct from a multiplicative Black–Scholes diffusion.
Brownian portfolio exposures Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-07
Brownian portfolio exposures are the coefficients of independent Brownian motions in the wealth equation. An invertible asset volatility matrix lets one optimize directly over these exposures. The drift risk premium is then the dot product of exposures with the market price of risk vector.
When the market price of risk is constant and nonzero spot volatility gives access to the driving Brownian motion, changes in volatility only rescale the dollar holding needed for fixed Brownian portfolio exposures. With unrestricted holdings and constant interest and discount rates, the CRRA utility value is consequently independent of the factor state. Zero volatility requires separate treatment.
Intertemporal hedging demand adjusts the myopic risky position when investment opportunities depend on a stochastic state. Shared noise between wealth and that state contributes a cross derivative to the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. In a complete diffusion market the optimal exposures combine the myopic market price of risk term and the value-gradient hedge term.
A one-factor short-rate model specifies with deterministic coefficient functions. All zero-coupon bond prices are functions of time, maturity and this single scalar state. The physical drift and pricing drift differ by , where is the market price of risk.
Here is the Brownian change-of-drift form of the Girsanov theorem. Let be a standard Brownian motion on and predictable with almost surely. Suppose the stochastic exponential
is a true martingale with . Define . Then is equivalent to and
The same statement holds in dimensions with scalar products, squared norms and a vector drift. Novikov's condition is a standard sufficient condition for the true-martingale hypothesis. Bounded is enough for all applications below.
For the proof, Itô formula gives . The Itô product rule gives the cancellation
The two drift terms cancel because . Stop when its absolute value reaches , at a time capped by . The same product calculation makes a local martingale under . Its absolute value is at most ; the density martingale is uniformly integrable over this finite horizon, so the stopped product is a true martingale. Bayes' conditional identity then gives
As increases, these stopping times exhaust the horizon by continuity. Thus is a continuous local martingale under . Adding a finite-variation drift does not change quadratic variation, so .
To prove the Brownian conclusion rather than just assert it, for every real apply Itô formula to . Its differential is , and its modulus is bounded on the fixed horizon, so it is a true martingale. Consequently
The conditional characteristic function identifies a centered normal increment with variance , independent of the past. Together with continuity and , this proves the Brownian assertion. For vector , the same argument uses and gives the multivariate version. If , stopping and applying Itô formula to gives a uniform second-moment bound by Gronwall inequality; this proves uniform integrability of the stopped densities and the needed true-martingale property in the bounded case.
In the Black-Scholes model with its usual augmented Brownian filtration, write , , with . Take , the market price of risk. Under , the preceding change of drift gives
so is a martingale. The Martingale representation theorem then makes integrable Brownian-market claims attainable and gives their risk-neutral pricing as discounted conditional expectations. The physical drift has disappeared from the price dynamics.
For the joint terminal-value and maximum law, first use the Brownian reflection principle at level . Reflecting a path after its first hit of preserves its law as a Brownian motion and sends a terminal value to ; the symmetry and strong Markov property of the post-hit increments justify this map. Thus, with ,
Take the constant-drift exponential density . By Girsanov theorem, the coordinate process under this tilted measure has the law of under . Consequently, for and ,
Completing the squares gives
Integrating proves
Here is the standard normal distribution function. The first variable is the terminal Brownian value, distinct from its running maximum.
Set , and . Under the risk-neutral measure, . Taking in the joint law gives the probability of not hitting the upper level. Complementing it and discounting the unit payment at maturity gives the one-touch option price
The exponential weight is also . The payment occurs at , even if the barrier was hit earlier, so its discount factor is , not a hitting-time discount factor.
Use the physical dynamics of the Black-Scholes model, , with bank rate and . Write for the market price of risk. If is portfolio wealth, the dollar amount in stock, and the consumption rate, the budget dynamics are
Admissible controls are progressively measurable, locally integrable in the required drift and diffusion norms, and keep . Such a solvency restriction excludes doubling-type strategies. In a complete Brownian market, the investment-consumption problem is to maximize
where the utility functions are increasing and concave. A terminal-only problem omits the integral. Strict concavity gives uniqueness of optimal consumption and terminal wealth when an optimum exists.
The state-price density is
The Itô formula gives
Thus is a nonnegative local martingale, hence a supermartingale, yielding the state-price budget constraint
Conversely, a nonnegative consumption plan and terminal payoff satisfying budget equality and the necessary integrability can be financed in the Brownian complete market. Define
The Brownian martingale representation theorem for the total future budget supplies a stochastic-integral coefficient; comparing it with defines . This reconstructs the wealth equation with . Localization gives the representation for integrable positive budgets when an assumption is not available.
For smooth strictly concave utilities with the usual marginal-utility range, let and be the inverse marginal utility functions. The Lagrange-multiplier solution is
where makes the budget an equality. This is a global argument, not merely formal differentiation: the concave supporting-tangent inequality gives
with the analogous terminal inequality. Taking expectations, integrating, and applying the budget bound makes the difference in objectives nonpositive. Replication of the candidate budget proves attainability and optimality whenever these expectations are well-defined and finite. If the marginal-utility ranges or integrability conditions fail, existence must be established separately rather than inferred from the first-order equations.
A detailed example is constant relative risk aversion utility and , with , , , and . Put
The optimal plans from the marginal-utility equations are and . The normal distribution of gives, for ,
The budget therefore becomes , determining the multiplier explicitly. Independent Brownian increments in the conditional budget formula give . The diffusion coefficient of is , so matching the wealth diffusion determines the dollar stock holding. Consequently the finite-horizon power-utility investment and consumption optimum is
All candidate moments are finite on a finite horizon, since powers of a lognormal state-price density have finite moments. The budget and tangent argument above therefore verify optimality in this example, including admissibility and positive wealth.
For another verification of the formulas, the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation for a value function with discount measured from the current time is
Substitute . The two concave maximizations give the displayed controls, and the remaining equation is with , exactly solved by the formula above. Thus
For , interpret the integral as , so . Unlike the infinite-horizon Merton consumption-investment problem, finite horizons do not require . Consumption vanishes in the terminal-only formulation; then the integral term in is absent and the optimal stock fraction remains . Logarithmic utility is handled directly with inverse marginal utility and the same wealth-to-consumption formula at , with .
Write , and specify the physical Black-Scholes model as , with constant and bank rate . The physical drift is needed for an expected utility calculation; a pricing model specified only under a risk-neutral measure does not determine the investor's preferences over risky positions. Put
Here is the market price of risk, is the density of the risk-neutral measure , and is the state-price density. The Girsanov theorem makes a Brownian motion under .
For a dollar holding in the stock and consumption rate , the portfolio wealth equation is
Since , integration by parts gives the useful deflated wealth equation with consumption
For strategies with a true deflated gain martingale, terminal wealth and consumption obey the state-price budget constraint
For nonnegative wealth and consumption, the admissibility condition can instead give a budget inequality; increasing utilities use the full budget at an optimum. Conversely, suitable integrable payoff and consumption plans with this budget are financeable in the Brownian complete market. To construct the strategy, set
By the Brownian martingale representation theorem, write . The required dollar stock holding is ; substitution in the deflated gain equation verifies financing. Remaining wealth goes into the bank account. For square-integrable data the representation holds directly, and localization handles the customary integrable admissible data.
First take no consumption. For an increasing strictly concave differentiable utility function whose marginal derivative can be inverted, let . Choose so that
This candidate is not merely a first-order guess. The concave supporting-tangent inequality gives, pointwise,
Taking expectations and using the budget proves for every feasible competitor. Finance the optimizer by its risk-neutral pricing value , using the preceding representation to find the holdings.
For a merely concave differentiable utility function, the general formulation is to select from the maximizers of over its wealth domain, and choose the multiplier to satisfy the budget. If increasing utility is not assumed, the equality-budget multiplier may have either sign; the positive-multiplier inverse formula above is for increasing utility. Flat portions allow multiple maximizers; boundaries require one-sided inequalities rather than equality of marginal derivatives. Existence of a multiplier, integrability and an admissible maximizer must be checked. Concavity alone does not guarantee a well-posed problem: with unrestricted dollar positions, linear utility and permits unbounded expected terminal wealth. The explicit utilities below satisfy the needed conditions in their stated domains.
For exponential utility on , and . Therefore
The budget is equivalently , since . Under , , giving . Hence
Matching the Brownian coefficient of with gives the finite-horizon exponential-utility portfolio
Hold shares and invest in the bank account. This is a dollar amount, not a fixed wealth fraction. The Gaussian exponential formula also gives the optimal expected utility
This calculation uses unrestricted wealth and an admissibility class permitting the displayed Gaussian terminal wealth, with integrable deflated gains and the relevant exponential moment. A nonnegative-wealth constraint would change the optimizer; no such constraint is imposed on this exponential-utility example.
For both terminal and running utility function, choose and a nonnegative adapted consumption rate to maximize subject to the combined budget. Pointwise maximization of and gives, for interior strictly concave cases,
Apply the concave supporting-tangent inequality to and to at every time, then integrate and take expectations. The difference in objectives is at most times the difference in budget expenditures, which is nonpositive. This proves optimality, not just the marginal conditions. The financing value is
The question's consumption rate is denoted here to keep it distinct from interest-rate notation.
For logarithmic utility with , , assume and positive wealth and consumption. The marginal conditions and budget give
Each state-price-weighted payment is deterministic, so conditional valuation immediately gives . Put . Since the Itô formula gives , this value satisfies
Comparison with the wealth equation verifies the complete finite-horizon logarithmic investment and consumption strategy:
Thus the optimal share holding is , and the remaining value is in the bank account; borrowing or shorting is allowed if that value or the stock holding is negative. Terminal wealth is positive and consumption is positive throughout. Finally , so the optimal objective, if desired explicitly, is
Finite-horizon lognormal moments ensure the budget and expected utilities are finite, completing the feasibility and optimality checks.
Let be the vector of expected returns and the positive definite covariance matrix of risky returns. For risky investment portfolio weights satisfying , the portfolio opportunity set consists of
Short selling permits negative weights. For a fixed expected return, the least possible variance is attained on the left boundary of this set. Its upper branch is the mean-variance efficient frontier: every other attainable point has either a larger standard deviation for the same expected return or a smaller expected return for the same risk. The lower boundary is therefore inefficient.
For example, writing , , and , minimization of subject to its two linear constraints gives
To obtain these weights, use Lagrange multipliers: the stationary equation is , and the budget and mean constraints determine . Positive definiteness makes this the unique constrained minimum. Thus the boundary is a hyperbola in risk/mean coordinates.
Adding the risk-free asset allows borrowing and lending at . In the usual positive-premium case the market portfolio is the risky tangency portfolio, and combinations of it with the risk-free asset form the upper capital market line
The Sharpe ratio measures excess expected return per unit of standard deviation; its maximum is the market price of risk . Points between the risk-free point and the tangency point lend some wealth; points beyond it borrow to leverage the market portfolio. The first panel illustrates the actual data here. The second anticipates the change in part (g), where the normalization of the tangency direction reverses its orientation.
Figure 1.
Risky opportunity sets and efficient risk-free portfolio combinations at risk-free returns of 3 and 25 percent
. Details.
A one-factor short-rate model uses a single scalar state, normally the short rate itself. Under the physical probability measure write
The second process is the continuous-time bank account. Specifying the physical diffusion alone does not determine bond prices: it must be accompanied by the market price of risk , or equivalently by pricing-measure dynamics. If the Girsanov theorem applies to the likelihood , then under the risk-neutral measure
Changing measure alters drift, not quadratic variation. The coefficients need conditions for a nonexplosive solution and for the relevant discounted prices and measure-change density to be true martingales.
A unit zero-coupon bond maturing at has price
The Markov property makes current time and rate sufficient state variables. Apply Itô formula to . Its drift must vanish, giving the short-rate bond pricing equation
Conversely, under the appropriate boundary and integrability conditions the Feynman-Kac formula identifies its solution with the displayed discounted expectation. For a terminal rate-dependent payoff , the same equation has terminal condition instead of one. A coupon bond is a sum of such unit-bond prices weighted by the coupon payments.
The common market price of risk can also be derived from trading, instead of being introduced arbitrarily for each maturity. Under the physical measure a bond's diffusion exposure is and its excess drift above bank financing is . For two nondegenerate traded bonds, combine their holdings to cancel their Brownian exposure. Absence of arbitrage requires that combination to earn the bank rate; hence their excess-drift-to-exposure ratios must coincide. Calling that common ratio yields the pricing equation with for every maturity. A derivative is then hedged locally by holding units of a nondegenerate bond and financing the remaining value through the bank account. Their Brownian exposures agree, and substituting both pricing equations proves the drift gain identity. This is short-rate diffusion hedging; it requires , rather than a bare assertion that one factor automatically gives completeness everywhere.
The entire yield curve is generated consistently from these bond prices. The continuously compounded yield and the instantaneous forward rate are
These encode different summaries: the yield averages the forward rate over the remaining lifetime. Bond prices must satisfy and be positive; they need not be below one in models permitting negative rates.
The Vasicek model has constant pricing dynamics
Solving the linear equation gives . Consequently, with and ,
This conditional normal random variable has variance . Its normal exponential moment yields
Evaluating the elementary integral gives
This explicit form makes estimation and valuation convenient. The rate is Gaussian, its conditional mean reverts to , and its long-run variance is . Its disadvantage, when nonnegative rates are desired, is a positive probability of negative rates.
The CIR model replaces constant volatility by square-root volatility:
The standard solution stays nonnegative. The Feller positivity condition for the CIR model is in this parameterization; with a positive initial rate it makes zero inaccessible. Below this threshold zero can be reached, although the process does not cross into negative rates. For an affine diffusion bond pricing ansatz , substitution into the bond equation and matching its constant and rate coefficients gives
Writing , factor the quadratic in the first equation and integrate from ; integrating the second equation then gives the CIR bond pricing formulas
The square-root form produces an affine term structure while respecting nonnegative rates. These parameters are pricing-measure parameters; historical mean-reversion estimates alone do not determine them without a risk-premium specification.
Both preceding constant-parameter models constrain the family of initial curves. The Hull-White model allows a deterministic time-dependent drift:
For a smooth desired initial forward curve , its exact forward-curve fit in the Hull-White model is obtained by taking
To derive this rather than merely assert calibration, write , where , . The conditional Gaussian-integral calculation at time zero gives
so its forward curve is . Choose . Differentiating this shift and adding gives exactly the displayed . Thus for every maturity, while and govern the stochastic fluctuations. This Gaussian model still allows negative rates.
Finally, one-factor models are economical and often give explicit bond prices, but their single Brownian driver is restrictive. Bond diffusion exposures give the instantaneous covariance matrix , of rank at most one. Nondegenerate maturity changes are instantaneously perfectly correlated, with correlation or , though their finite-horizon correlations need not equal one. A single factor therefore cannot independently describe level, slope and curvature shocks to the whole yield curve. Multiple factors or a full forward-rate model offer greater flexibility. A valid one-factor model must specify the pricing drift, fit the initial curve to the required accuracy, and handle boundary and martingale conditions; naming a rate diffusion alone is not a complete pricing model.
An interest rate model must describe a whole term structure of interest rates, not just one future scalar rate. Let be the time- price of a unit zero-coupon bond maturing at . For a sufficiently regular maturity curve, define the instantaneous forward rate and short rate by
Since , integration gives
Here is the continuous-time bank account. Thus modelling the two-parameter field determines both the bonds and the discounting account. A Gaussian random field means that every finite collection of its values is jointly Gaussian; merely making each individual forward rate normally distributed is insufficient.
A useful arbitrage-free construction works under a money-market risk-neutral measure . Take independent Brownian motions , deterministic coefficient sequences , and a deterministic initial forward curve . With the coefficients viewed as vectors in a separable Hilbert space , write
For infinitely many factors, the last term means the limit of , not an assumption that the infinite vector of Brownian motions is itself -valued. Require and the maturity/time regularity needed for stochastic integration and exchange of integrals. Deterministic drift and volatility make this a Gaussian forward-rate field.
The field covariance is determined by
For every finite set of maturities, must be positive semidefinite. A one-factor model has rank-one instantaneous covariance, while additional or infinitely many factors permit richer correlations along the yield curve. Equivalently one can drive the curve with a maturity-correlated Brownian field satisfying . A Brownian sheet gives the example
Multiplication by deterministic maturity-dependent amplitudes, or deterministic increasing changes of the two sheet coordinates, gives further Gaussian covariance structures. A covariance specification alone is not sufficient: the forward drift must also obey absence of arbitrage.
To derive that drift restriction, put
Differentiate the moving lower endpoint in to obtain
The Itô formula therefore gives
Discounted bond prices must be martingales under . Their drift vanishes precisely when . Differentiating in maturity gives the Heath-Jarrow-Morton model restriction
For scalar amplitudes multiplying a field with covariance kernel , this becomes . The extra maturity correlation factor cannot in general be dropped.
The complete Gaussian specification is consequently
Its mean and covariance follow immediately from deterministic integration and the Itô isometry. The initial yield curve is an input, so fitting initial bond prices requires choosing rather than changing a few scalar parameters. With the displayed drift, the discounted bond obeys
On finite horizons, deterministic square-integrable bond volatility gives an expectation-one stochastic exponential, hence a true discounted bond price martingale. This supplies an arbitrage-free pricing model for admissible portfolios in any finite collection of these bonds. Under a physical measure, a market price of risk vector changes the drift: if , then the physical forward drift is . Historical mean changes must therefore not be inserted in place of the risk-neutral drift restriction. Gaussianity under both measures additionally requires suitable deterministic drift changes; state-dependent risk premiums need not preserve Gaussianity under the physical measure.
There is also a useful general consistency test for a proposed Gaussian field beyond this independent-increment construction. Define
In the filtration generated by a Gaussian field, conditional distributions of such linear functionals are Gaussian. For , the martingale requirement is therefore exactly
This follows by taking the conditional exponential moment and equating it to . It constrains both the deterministic mean and the covariance-induced conditional mean. Matching only unconditional discounted bond expectations does not suffice. For the Brownian-field construction, the Heath-Jarrow-Morton model restriction realizes this consistency condition through local drift cancellation.
Gaussian structure makes risk-neutral pricing particularly tractable. As a finite-factor example, take the Vasicek model under :
Solving this Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process gives, for ,
Hence, with and , the conditional Gaussian integral has
The exponential moment identity for a normal variable now gives the zero-coupon bond price , where
This outlines the derivation of the familiar exponential-affine form without assuming a deterministic future discount rate. More general forward-field models need not reduce to a finite-dimensional Markov short-rate process.
For another application, a call at time on a unit maturity- bond, with and strike , is priced under the T-forward measure, using as numéraire. The bond-price ratio is a martingale under that measure and has deterministic volatility . It is consequently lognormal, with integrated log-variance
Integrating the lognormal payoff gives the Gaussian bond-option formula
At use . The same idea prices other suitable Gaussian-rate derivatives through forward measures and normal exponential moments.
The attractions are exact initial-curve fitting, explicit covariance control across maturities, and tractable bond and option prices. The limitations are also structural: Gaussian short rates and instantaneous forward rates generally can be negative; finite-factor specifications restrict maturity correlations; and deterministic volatilities cannot reproduce arbitrary stochastic changes in rate dispersion. An infinite-factor model allows richer covariance but typically leaves risks that cannot be spanned by finitely many traded bonds. Thus Gaussianity is a useful modelling choice, not by itself a guarantee of positivity, market completeness, or absence of arbitrage.
Use for the dollar amount invested in the stock; the number of shares is . The bank account contains dollars. With no intermediate consumption, the self-financing portfolio equation is
If instead denotes share holdings, replace each dollar here by . The equation says that trading only reallocates existing portfolio wealth; gains come from cash interest and stock returns.
For the standard unconstrained complete-diffusion formulation, assume the completed natural Brownian filtration, initial wealth , and nonnegative admissible wealth. Define the market price of risk . The boundedness assumptions make bounded. The state-price density normalized at zero is
Its money-market-adjusted process is a true martingale by the Novikov condition. Under , the Girsanov theorem gives as a Brownian motion, and the discounted stock has zero drift.
The Itô product rule applied to the wealth equation gives
For nonnegative admissible wealth this is a nonnegative local martingale, hence a supermartingale. Therefore every affordable terminal payoff satisfies the state-price budget constraint . Nonzero volatility and the Brownian martingale representation theorem allow replication of nonnegative claims with finite state-price cost.
For a differentiable strictly concave utility function with the usual conditions ensuring an interior integrable optimizer, put , the inverse marginal utility. Pointwise maximization of gives
The second equation determines the positive constant . To prove optimality, use the concave supporting-tangent inequality:
Taking expectations and using the budget bound proves that the candidate dominates every admissible affordable payoff, whenever the utility expectations are well defined. This is the complete-market terminal utility optimizer.
The actual wealth and dollar portfolio are as explicit as general adapted coefficients permit. Let
The Brownian martingale representation theorem, with localization if only integrability is initially known, gives . The dollar portfolio from a deflated wealth martingale is
The bank holds dollars. Equivalently, with , . These formulas need no unjustified differentiability of a value function with random coefficients.
The printed assumption that is only increasing and concave does not guarantee that the interior formula exists, or even that the optimal value is finite. In general replace the inverse formula by an affordable selection
where is the wealth domain; boundary choices or supporting slopes handle nondifferentiability. Existence, finite cost and replication still have to hold. A concrete obstruction is the unbounded linear terminal-wealth utility: take , , , and the Brownian filtration. Then . For , the bounded nonnegative claim
is replicable, costs , and has . Thus there is no finite optimal expected utility under the literal utility hypotheses alone. Also, bounded coefficients do not ensure market completeness in an arbitrarily enlarged filtration containing untraded randomness; the full replication formula uses the Brownian market information assumption stated above.
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.
Use column vectors for dollar holdings and put , and . The normalized state-price density is
The vector is the market price of risk. The density defines an equivalent risk-neutral measure, under which is Brownian motion and every stock has drift . A terminal claim with finite state-price cost is priced at . Nonsingularity of and the natural Brownian market information make this a complete market; in particular the optimal nonnegative payoff below can be replicated.
Let and . Apply the Itô formula to each log price, whose return variance is :
Summing and dividing by proves the geometric stock index formula
Thus , where . The factor applies to the whole bracket. The geometric average need not itself be a self-financing portfolio; its instantaneous drift is .
If is the dollar amount invested in stock , the bank account holds . The self-financing portfolio equation is
Equivalently, gives . For share-holding notation replace by times the number of shares.
Static expected utility maximization uses the terminal budget . Since is an exogenous positive benchmark, differentiating in gives . An interior Lagrange multiplier for the budget therefore gives
For CRRA utility, write . Since , solving this marginal equation gives
Every positive lognormal moment is finite here, so the budget determines the constant uniquely. Put
Then
This is also a sufficiency condition: concavity gives , and taking expectations and using the budget inequality proves global optimality.
To find the whole optimal process, set and
Since , the moment-generating function of a normal distribution gives
Pricing the terminal payoff yields the explicit benchmark-relative power-utility portfolio wealth
Its proportional diffusion coefficient is . Since the wealth diffusion coefficient for dollar fractions is , replication requires
Using gives the requested fixed proportions:
The drift matches the self-financing portfolio equation as well. Indeed, , so the drift of from the explicit formula is
Consequently an equivalent form of the solution is
The bank account fraction is , with negative values representing borrowing. The first stock term is ordinary power-utility risk exposure, while the second hedges the random benchmark. At the logarithmic limit the benchmark term disappears, consistently with .
Use the usual stochastic-integrability assumptions implicit in the price stochastic differential equation: the coefficients have progressively measurable versions, the volatility is locally square integrable, and initial prices are finite deterministic positive numbers. A no-consumption admissible trading strategy consists of predictable risky share holdings for which the price stochastic integral exists and the portfolio wealth of the self-financing portfolio is
The remainder is held in the unit cash asset. Admissibility requires throughout the horizon for some deterministic finite ; the more restrictive nonnegative-wealth convention also works. A finite-horizon arbitrage is such a strategy with , almost surely and . The lower bound is essential to exclude doubling strategies.
Interpret the stated uniform ellipticity as for a deterministic . If , the market price of risk is bounded:
The authoritative PDF puts both integrals inside the exponent. With that interpretation,
On every finite horizon , boundedness of gives the Novikov condition:
Hence the positive stochastic exponential is a true martingale with . Define the equivalent probability measure by . The Girsanov theorem says that is a Brownian motion under , up to time . Consequently
so the prices are local martingales under .
Every admissible zero-initial-capital self-financing portfolio has portfolio wealth which is therefore a -local martingale bounded below by . The shifted process is a nonnegative local martingale, hence a supermartingale by localization and the Conditional Fatou lemma. In particular . If the strategy were an arbitrage, nonnegativity of would force -almost surely. Equivalence of and would then force , a contradiction. The market has no admissible arbitrage on any finite horizon. This proves the exclusion argument itself, rather than just asserting the fundamental theorem of asset pricing.
For the deflated price calculation, let denote the column vector whose transpose is the th row of . The Itô product rule includes the quadratic covariation term
Since , the full product equation is
Localization makes the last stochastic integral a true martingale on each stopped interval, proving each component of the deflated price vector is a local martingale under the original measure. This is the bounded-coefficient asset deflator identity; bounded volatility has not yet been used.
If is bounded, then is bounded as well. Solving the last linear stochastic differential equation gives
The Novikov condition now holds for this stochastic exponential on every finite horizon, because its bracket is bounded by a deterministic constant times the horizon. Therefore
The entire deflated price vector is a true martingale when volatility is bounded. This finite-horizon argument does not assert uniform integrability as time tends to infinity, which is not required. Integrable random initial prices can also be handled by the conditional martingale argument; without any integrability assumption on initial prices, a true-martingale assertion would not be meaningful.
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.
Wealth and admissibility. The dollar holding earns the risky return, while earns the continuous-time bank account return. Removing consumption therefore gives
Here is a dollar amount, not a number of shares; the number of shares is . Both controls must use available information: take predictable and progressively measurable, with
almost surely on every finite interval. Require a well-defined objective and an admissible trading strategy satisfying . At zero portfolio wealth this excludes continued risky gambling or positive consumption. The state-price budget constraint rules out doubling strategies. Throughout the diffusion calculations take , positive discount , positive decay , and finite value; degeneracies are discussed where they affect the conclusions.
Satisfaction and dynamic programming. Write the consumption satisfaction stock as
The product rule gives, almost everywhere in time,
This state is a finite-variation process, so it has no quadratic covariation with portfolio wealth. Applying the Itô formula to the discounted value function over a short interval, then using dynamic programming, gives the interior HJB equation
Assuming , completing the square gives
The last supremum is zero if and infinite otherwise. Thus the gradient constraint for unbounded consumption is , and wherever the inequality is strict. Since there is no direct penalty for a very large consumption rate, an active boundary can involve singular consumption control. In that relaxed interpretation the HJB equation is
With ordinary rate controls, this describes the supremum and its limiting transfer policy; it does not promise that an instantaneous transfer is attained by a finite rate.
Power reduction. An additive constant in the utility function only adds a control-independent constant divided by to the value, so normalize . Put and for . Scaling portfolio wealth, consumption satisfaction and the controls by the same positive number gives the wealth-to-satisfaction reduction
Consequently the reduced HJB equation is
In the strict waiting region the first expression vanishes and consumption is zero. On a transfer region the second vanishes; integrating it gives . This reflects preservation of during an instantaneous wealth-to-satisfaction transfer.
Why a waiting threshold is expected, and its qualification. The gradient constraint for unbounded consumption compares the benefit of increasing consumption satisfaction with the opportunity cost of spending financial portfolio wealth. When consumption satisfaction is already large relative to cash, waiting lets consumption satisfaction decay while financial portfolio wealth earns returns; consuming immediately can be wasteful. Homogeneity makes the comparison depend only on . For fixed , joint concavity of the value function makes concave in financial portfolio wealth . It is nondecreasing because an immediate transfer can reproduce any smaller financial allocation. Consequently its derivative is nonnegative and nonincreasing in : a strict waiting region, if present, starts at zero financial portfolio wealth and ends at a single transfer boundary. Homogeneity makes the corresponding boundary a ratio . In the usual finite-boundary regime this gives for , and transfers push a larger ratio down towards . The condition is a comparison of marginal values, not the ordinary formula : current utility function here depends on consumption satisfaction, not on current consumption.
A positive threshold is not guaranteed by the printed hypotheses alone. A useful sufficient local test illustrates the intended argument. Let . At zero portfolio wealth,
Starting with a small extra portfolio wealth , holding it in the continuous-time bank account until a fixed time , then transferring it into consumption satisfaction, has right derivative in at zero equal to
Therefore, if , the portfolio wealth marginal value is strictly larger than the consumption satisfaction marginal value at zero. With the usual continuity of marginal values, there is a positive interval on which the gradient constraint for unbounded consumption is strict. The fixed-total-resource concavity argument then gives the threshold structure.
For a concrete counterexample to an unconditional positive threshold, take , , , and . There is zero market price of risk. The relaxed value is
Indeed , , and the optimized waiting residual, after division by , is
because and the integrand is decreasing. The Itô formula gives an upper bound by , while transferring all portfolio wealth into consumption satisfaction over intervals tending to zero attains that bound in the limit. Hence the transfer boundary is in this example. The positive-threshold explanation needs a parameter regime supporting a genuine waiting region. For , even the zero-wealth value is finite only if ; otherwise decaying consumption satisfaction gives value .
Choose the market price of risk . The Girsanov theorem, with the hypotheses allowed in the question, gives an equivalent martingale measure under which
Thus the stock under the risk-neutral measure is a linear Gaussian diffusion. In particular, for its conditional mean and standard deviation are
Put and let be the standard normal distribution function. For ,
since . Discounting this expectation gives the call price in an arithmetic stock model with interest. A particularly convenient expression is
At maturity define . This value is nonnegative because it is a discounted expectation of a nonnegative payoff.
For , hold shares and hold units of the continuous-time bank account. The pricing function solves
The Itô formula under the physical measure therefore gives
This proves self-financing and terminal replication, with wealth always . The coefficients are locally smooth before maturity, and the strategy extends to maturity through its continuous wealth limit and the square-integrable discounted payoff representation.
To see minimality, any other nonnegative self-financing portfolio replicating the payoff has discounted wealth a nonnegative local martingale under , hence a supermartingale. Its initial capital must satisfy . The strategy constructed above attains equality. Thus
The additive physical diffusion may take negative stock values; the formula and nonnegative replicating wealth remain valid. Replacing it by a multiplicative Black–Scholes diffusion would give the wrong price and hedge.
Normalize the constant relative risk aversion utility as . The printed specification of alone also permits an additive constant ; that would add to the value, so the stated homogeneity holds for the normalized value. Set
Multiplying initial wealth, the historical maximum, dollar investments, and consumption by multiplies every term of the wealth equation by , including the tax term. It maps admissible policies bijectively and multiplies the normalized reward by . Therefore the value scales as
The historical maximum means when initially .
Inside the state region , the maximum is locally constant. The Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation is
At , the finite-variation contribution in the Itô formula is . The high-water mark tax boundary condition is consequently
For an increasing, strictly concave function of wealth, optimizing the two controls gives
The consumption convex conjugate is
Substitution of the homogeneity derivatives gives the reduced equation and boundary condition
The controls in scaled variables are and .
Use the wealth-variable Legendre dual
Since , the inverse map satisfies and . Inserting into the reduced Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation gives a linear Euler equation
For the Euler differential equation operator on the left, its action on is . Write . Under , the particular solution is . For the nondegenerate case , the two characteristic roots are , with because and . Thus the general solution also contains .
Here and the relevant dual domain is . The inverse wealth ratio must have as . The particular solution and the negative-root term have derivatives tending to zero, whereas has an unbounded derivative unless . Hence the admissible dual solution has the claimed form
The quadratic-root formulation presupposes a nonzero market price of risk. If , the dual equation becomes first order; it is treated directly or by an appropriate nondegenerate limit rather than by assuming two quadratic roots.
The inverse map and the tax boundary provide two equations at :
Because , these become
Let . Eliminating gives . Also , since puts strictly between the two roots. The derivative boundary then gives . Therefore the constants are
There is an important admissibility qualification in the printed conclusion. With ,
The second term is negative, but decays faster than the first because . Direct differentiation at the boundary gives
A wealth-variable Legendre dual of a concave value must be a convex function. Thus the printed smooth tax-paying solution requires , with the limiting case allowed as a degenerate boundary. The assumptions and do not imply this: for example , , , , and give and , hence negative boundary dual curvature.
For higher tax the investor can avoid raising the historical maximum. The wealth-cap investment boundary replaces the tax-paying equality by , alongside . Solving these equations gives
These are the same constants with replaced by . More generally the admissible two-regime expression uses
in the constants, while the claimed formulas themselves describe the tax-paying regime. In the cap regime the portfolio volatility vanishes at and the consumption rate there is , so the wealth drift points inward and no new maximum is required. The remaining boundary inequality is , consistent with avoiding costly maximum increases. For , dual curvature is positive because the negative term in decays faster than the positive term. Thus this qualification repairs an actual missing parameter restriction rather than a TeX transcription error.
Let be the manager's utility function as a function of nonnegative terminal fund wealth. Write
Then
Both pieces are increasing and strictly concave functions. However, the derivative jumps upward from to at . The payoff utility is increasing but not concave. A concave function must have nonincreasing one-sided slopes.
For concavification of incentive utility, the common tangent for exponential incentive utility replaces the upward kink by its common tangent. There are contact points and a common slope satisfying
Since and , the chord condition gives . Solving the derivative matching yields the contact points
The assumption that is large enough means, explicitly, that
so . The inequalities follow from and for .
The least concave majorant on is
It is increasing and concave: the derivative is decreasing outside the interval and equals inside. The tangent line lies above each original branch. Any concave majorant must lie above the chord joining the two contacts, so this one is the least.
Figure 1.
Common tangent replacing the incentive kink in terminal-wealth utility
. Details.
The state-price budget constraint now reduces the problem to pointwise maximization of , where and is chosen so that . Because is finite, the nonnegative wealth constraint must be included. The optimal terminal wealth is
At , any point of maximizes the concavified objective. If , the state-price density has a continuous log-normal distribution, so this event has probability zero. The optimizer then avoids almost surely and satisfies . The supporting-line proof from part (i), with supergradients at the contacts, proves optimality for the concavified problem; the pointwise equality proves the same optimizer and value solve the original manager's problem. Nonnegative replication is available in the complete market.
If , the state-price density is deterministic. If the required deterministic mean terminal wealth lies in the linear segment, randomize between and at the common slope instead of choosing an interior wealth. This maintains the budget and attains the same concavified value. The Brownian market can replicate that bounded lottery even when its market price of risk is zero.
In the special case , and the fund has a fair-game wealth process. Since , the manager uses fair-game gambling induced by an incentive fee:
For example choose a threshold event in with the displayed probability and replicate its payoff. Then remains between and , so the strategy respects nonnegative wealth. It earns no risk premium but raises expected incentive utility function above the value at the unrandomized , because the common tangent lies strictly above the kink.