For holdings , let and . Under the investment-consumption arbitrage convention used here, an arbitrage satisfies
The initial consumption is , and the terminal consumption is : there is a possible gain with no external funding and no negative consumption. A pure-investment arbitrage additionally requires . This convention is important because the last part distinguishes initial consumption from pure investment.
Write for holdings of cash, the stock and the European put option, and let be initial consumption. At the given price, , and the three terminal payoffs, in descending order of the stock price, are
Nonnegative terminal payoffs require and . Together with , these imply . If they force , which is not an arbitrage. If , the highest-state payoff is at least , so every such choice is an arbitrage. Consequently the complete set is
The pure-investment arbitrages are exactly the choices :
For example, costs zero and pays .