Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 38 1 e Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
First propagate terminal nonnegativity backwards; it is not necessary to assume nonnegative wealth at intermediate dates. Suppose and defineThese events increase to the whole space up to a null set. On , both the old value and the coefficient are bounded, so is integrable andThe left side is nonnegative; hence on every , and therefore almost surely. Starting from , induction gives for every .
The process stopped at is now a nonnegative discrete-time local martingale. Part (b) makes it a martingale with initial value zero. Consequently , and a nonnegative random variable with zero expectation vanishes almost surely:This is the terminal nonnegativity criterion for a finite-horizon martingale transform. A finite deterministic horizon is essential to the backward induction.