For asset dynamics , let and . The Itô product rule cancels the drift of each , leaving the displayed stochastic integral. When is bounded and , is bounded and the Novikov condition makes a true martingale on every finite horizon. If is also bounded, each satisfies the Novikov condition as a stochastic exponential with bounded integrand , so it too is a true martingale.
If the entire integrand path is independent of the integrating Brownian motion, conditioning on that path gives a deterministic square-integrable integrand. The Itô isometry and Gaussian approximation by simple integrands show that its stochastic integral is conditionally centered normal with the stated variance. A strictly positive finite conditional variance implies that the unconditional distribution has no atoms.
Deflated wealth equation with consumption Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-07
A self-financing investor with consumption satisfies and . The Itô product rule and give the displayed equation. For a positive local martingale deflator , the first term is a stochastic integral against the vector of deflated asset-price local martingales, not their current levels.
Elementary predictable process with stopping-time intervals Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
An elementary predictable process may use finitely many ordered stopping times , with bounded -measurable coefficients on . Its elementary stochastic integral is . The stopped indicators are left-continuous and adapted, so the process is predictable; common refinement shows the sum is independent of its representation. Deterministic endpoints recover the usual simple predictable process. These integrands give the precise good-integrator test in the Bichteler-Dellacherie theorem.
Suppose a finite-horizon market has a strictly positive numéraire and an equivalent measure under which all prices are local martingales. The discounted wealth of a self-financing strategy is a stochastic integral against those prices. If it is bounded below by a deterministic constant, that wealth is a supermartingale: add the lower-bound constant to obtain a nonnegative local martingale, then apply conditional Fatou to a localizing sequence. A zero-cost admissible portfolio therefore has expected discounted terminal wealth at most zero. Nonnegative terminal wealth with positive probability of a strict gain would have strictly positive expectation under the equivalent measure, a contradiction. Thus there is no admissible arbitrage. True martingales are not needed for this implication.
For a fixed initial value , the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process has the normal distribution
The two parameters of are the expected value and variance, not the standard deviation. At the variance is zero and the value is fixed. More generally, its transition kernel over any interval of length has conditional expected value and conditional variance when the current value is . The coefficients depend on elapsed time; the initial probability distribution determines whether the resulting stochastic process is stationary.[ref]
In the stipulated example , , , , the expected value at time two is and the variance is . The initial distance from two has fallen by a factor , but the standard deviation has grown to about . Approaching the reference level in expected value is compatible with growing uncertainty from a perfectly known initial value.
Figure 1.
Ornstein-Uhlenbeck transition densities, mean relaxation and variance growth from a fixed initial value
. Details.
The solid probability density functions use times , and ; the dashed curve is the limiting normal distribution with expected value two and variance one. The curves are exact model predictions. There is no ordinary density for the fixed value at time zero.
A short derivation uses the integrating factor . The Itô product rule gives , hence
The stochastic integral has zero expected value. The Itô isometry gives its variance as . Its deterministic integrand makes it a Gaussian random variable, yielding the displayed normal distribution. Shifting the integration interval gives the same transition kernel from any later time.
Under the specified risk-neutral measure, the Itô product rule and give
Thus discounted traded zero-coupon bonds have zero drift. Assume the usual integrability and admissibility conditions that make discounted replicating values true martingales, not merely local martingales. If is an attainable financial payoff with , its self-financing portfolio value has terminal value and satisfies
Multiplying by yields
This proves the requested conditional pricing formula. In a Brownian filtration, the Martingale representation theorem realizes the discounted conditional expectation as a stochastic integral. If an available bond has nonzero Itô diffusion exposure, its holdings can match that integral, with the remaining value in the bank account, giving replication under the usual square-integrability conditions.
These attainability or market completeness hypotheses matter for a completely arbitrary contingent claim: existence of a risk-neutral measure alone need not imply a unique price for every unspanned financial payoff, and a zero-drift local martingale alone need not satisfy the displayed terminal expectation identity. In the general path-dependent Heath-Jarrow-Morton model, write the value as ; notation is justified only when the current short rate is a sufficient state for the financial payoff and dynamics.
For a simple predictable process, define its stochastic integral by
Common refinement of the deterministic partitions makes this definition independent of the representation. Each summand is a martingale increment multiplied by information already available at its left endpoint, so the resulting process is a continuous square-integrable martingale starting at zero. Its terminal value is the same sum with replaced by .
Write . If , then is -measurable. By the conditional expectation identity for increments of a martingale,
The conditional bracket isometry for stopped martingale increments gives
For completeness, this identity follows by applying the optional stopping theorem to and and expanding the square. The latter process is a true uniformly integrable martingale here: the Doob L2 maximal inequality bounds , stopped square identities and Fatou's lemma give , and its absolute supremum is bounded by . Consequently all the stopped identities pass to the limit.
Multiplying the conditional identity by , taking expectations, and using the vanished cross terms proves the Itô isometry:
To extend the stochastic integral, use the finite quadratic-variation measure on the predictable sigma-algebra. The density of simple predictable processes for finite measures gives approximations to every . The Itô isometry makes the corresponding terminal integrals Cauchy in , and the Doob L2 maximal inequality makes the whole processes Cauchy in expected squared supremum. Their limit defines a continuous martingale, and the isometry persists. For a locally bounded predictable process, choose increasing stopping times tending to infinity on which it is bounded, also restrict the time horizon, and perform this construction after stopping. The isometry shows that the stopped definitions agree on overlaps, so they patch into a uniquely defined continuous local martingale .
First stop the solution on leaving , at , and set . The stochastic integral representation, the Doob L2 maximal inequality and the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality give, for ,
Here stopping ensures square integrability before the calculation, and explains the constant. The Gronwall inequality gives . For globally Lipschitz functions as coefficients, the global existence theorem for stochastic differential equations with Lipschitz coefficients supplies a nonexplosive solution. Letting increase and using Fatou's lemma proves the slightly stronger maximal second-moment bound under linear growth:
For coefficients that are only locally Lipschitz functions, let and replace the coefficients by and . These are globally Lipschitz functions, agree with the originals on , and obey the same linear growth condition for an SDE, since . The globally defined solutions agree until their common exits from by pathwise uniqueness. The uniform preceding estimate and Markov's inequality imply
Patch the solutions before their increasing exit times. Their limiting lifetime exceeds almost surely by this bound. Thus a pathwise unique strong solution exists throughout even for locally Lipschitz coefficients.
Here is a finite-horizon Girsanov theorem statement with the sign fixed explicitly. Let be a Brownian motion under , and let be predictable with almost surely. If
is a true martingale with , then the measure defined by makes a Brownian motion up to . The sufficient Novikov condition is . Merely being a local martingale is not a sufficient density condition.
For a deterministic absolutely continuous function with and derivative , take . Novikov's condition holds because its exponential is deterministic and finite. Under , the canonical process has the law of a Brownian motion plus . Thus for every bounded measurable path functional ,
This derives the Cameron-Martin theorem density formula from the Girsanov theorem, rather than assuming the two measures have the same drift convention. Replacing by changes the sign of the stochastic integral.
The question's path space is the whole half-line, not just one finite horizon. When , the density martingale satisfies
It has a uniformly integrable limit of mean one, strictly positive almost surely. Integrals here converge in and almost surely. The finite-time identities then identify as the density on the full path sigma-algebra, since finite-time cylinder events generate it. This is Cameron-Martin shifts on infinite Wiener path space. Finite-horizon absolute continuity of measures alone does not imply infinite-horizon absolute continuity of measures.
For continuous semimartingales , the semimartingale integration by parts formula is
Indeed each partition increment satisfies
Summing telescopes the left side. The first two sums converge to the stochastic integrals by left-endpoint approximation, and the last sum converges to the quadratic covariation by polarization of the quadratic-increment formula. All limits are in uniform convergence on compacts in probability. Hence the equality holds at every time outside one null set, using continuity. In differential notation it is the Itô product rule .
For a vector of continuous semimartingales and , the multidimensional Itô formula is
One route from the product formula is to apply it repeatedly to powers and products of the coordinates, obtaining this expression for polynomials; polarization identifies the mixed second derivatives. Time is another coordinate of finite variation, so it has no quadratic-covariation contribution. Localize to compact ranges, approximate a function and its indicated derivatives by smooth polynomial approximations, and pass to the limit using stochastic-integral continuity and the variation bounds on the finite-variation terms. Equivalently, second-order Taylor expansion along partitions gives the same limit, with integration by parts accounting for every quadratic term.
Define the stochastic integral
It is adapted to , starts at zero and has continuous paths. Integrals over disjoint clock intervals are centered Gaussian and independent, and an increment from to is independent of . The Itô isometry gives its variance
These are precisely the defining properties of a -Brownian motion; in particular its future increments are independent of .
Deterministic substitution in the stochastic integral, first for step integrands and then by the Itô isometry, gives . Hence
The initial term is essential: a stochastic integral from time zero alone cannot equal , since . This is the unscaled part of the exponential Brownian time change to a stationary Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process.
The printed pathwise conclusion is false without specifying the initial value. We first prove exactly what the hypotheses do imply, by stationary drift saturation.
Stationarity gives . The Itô formula yields
The stochastic integral is a true square-integrable martingale on every finite horizon, since . Also by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Taking expectations therefore gives
Every integrand is nonnegative, so for almost every . For those times,
It follows that for almost every time and outcome. Equality of these integrable drift terms gives the exact solution
Thus solves the same equation, but stationarity has not identified its initial random variable with .
For an explicit counterexample, take
This is adapted to . Its independent normal initial value and Brownian noise make it a centered stationary Gaussian process with covariance , exactly as for . Hence and , satisfying every printed hypothesis. Nevertheless , which is nonzero almost surely for every finite .
The corrected result is indistinguishability if one adds almost surely. Without that addition, there is equality in law of the stationary Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes, not necessarily equality of their coupled paths. To see that the initial law is forced, independence of Brownian increments from and stationarity give, for its characteristic function ,
Letting proves . This is the distinction captured by same-noise stationary Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes.
The endpoint value printed in this part is erroneous. The correct conclusion is
Already gives convergence in probability to zero and rules out an almost sure limit of one.
To prove the stronger endpoint convergence, use time reversal of a Brownian bridge. Set , including . Both and are centered Gaussian processes, and for ,
They therefore have the same finite-dimensional distributions. The path of is continuous at zero, since its stochastic integral is continuous there. In particular its values at positive rational times tend to zero at zero with probability one. Equality of the laws on the countable rational coordinates transfers this event to . The path of is continuous at every time in , so its supremum on any interval bounded away from zero is determined by rational times. The rational endpoint condition consequently implies as along all real times. Hence as , and setting gives a continuous version on the whole closed interval. This proof uses equality of coordinate laws, without assuming terminal continuity in advance.
For , is not measurable with respect to the original Brownian filtration : its conditional variance is . Thus it is not even adapted on the full half-line. It also fails the martingale condition before time one. With , ,
The appropriate filtration is
Brownian independent increments make a continuous -martingale, with quadratic variation . Define the stochastic integral
The value of the integrand at zero is immaterial; it is square-integrable against the bracket because . Consequently , and the Lévy characterization of Brownian motion makes a -Brownian motion. Associativity of stochastic integrals gives the Brownian motion under a quadratic time change representation
The function is continuous at zero. One can first verify the inverse-integrand identity on and then let using the Itô isometry, since .