Put . The stopped martingale in discrete time identity
shows that is a martingale: the indicator function is -measurable and the increment has zero conditional expectation. Integrability follows because is selected from the finitely many integrable values .
For the bounded stopping time , the optional stopping theorem in its conditional form gives
Here is the stopping-time sigma-algebra. Indeed, for , partition into and apply the martingale identity on each piece. This proves the displayed conditional expectation identity directly.
Let and . Conditional absolute-value domination and the Markov inequality give and, for any ,
First choose using the uniform integrability of , and then choose . The estimate is uniform in , proving uniform integrability of a stopped uniformly integrable martingale. No finiteness assumption on is needed.
For , the first time is a stopping time. On , the bounded increments assumption controls the overshoot:
Before that time, . Allowing the possibility , the process
is a nonnegative martingale. Indeed, the stopped martingale in discrete time is a martingale, and the integrable -measurable variable is a constant-in-time martingale. If , nonnegativity follows from . Its expectations are constant and finite, so the Martingale convergence theorem makes converge to a finite value almost surely.
On this proves finite convergence of . Taking the countable union over positive integer , we conclude that converges finitely on the event . Apply the same reasoning to the martingale to obtain finite convergence on .
Outside the event of finite convergence, both the infimum and the supremum of the sequence must therefore be infinite in the respective directions. Removing any finite initial segment cannot change this, because each of its values is finite. Hence
This is the bounded-increment martingale convergence-or-oscillation dichotomy. The term ensures the proof also covers an unbounded integrable initial value.
Assume (i), and let be a stopping time. The increments of the stopped process satisfy
Because , taking conditional expectation given makes the right-hand side zero. Integrability follows from
a finite sum of integrable random variables. Hence is a martingale, proving (ii).
The increment of the stopped process is
Because is a stopping time, . Taking conditional expectation therefore gives zero. The stopped variables are adapted and integrable, so the stopped martingale in discrete time is a martingale.