Past exam of the continuous martingales and stochastic calculus course of the University of Oxford / 2023 / 2 / a / ii

For a bounded simple predictable process $H$ and a continuous martingale $M\in {\mathcal{H}}^{2,c}$, the Itô isometry statesHere $⟨M⟩$ is the predictable quadratic variation, equal to $[M]$ for a continuous martingale. On the whole half-line, the terminal form isThe Itô integral starts at zero even when $M_0\ne 0$. For Brownian motion, $d⟨B{⟩}_s=ds$.

For completeness, cross terms of the finite increment sum have expectation zero by conditioning on the earlier endpoint of the later increment. Also $M^2-⟨M⟩$ is a martingale, so the remaining terms satisfyThis proves the displayed identity without a change-of-variables formula. Completing bounded simple predictable processes in the norm $(\mathbb{E}\int H^{2}d⟨M⟩{)}^{1/2}$ defines the Itô integral of every square-integrable stochastic integrand. This completion will justify the unbounded Brownian integrands below.