Local martingale
In mathematics, a local martingale is a type of , satisfying the localized version of the martingale property. Every martingale is a local martingale; every bounded local martingale is a martingale; in particular, every local martingale that is bounded from below is a supermartingale, and every local martingale that is bounded from above is a submartingale; however, in general a local martingale is not a martingale, because its expectation can be distorted by large values of small probability. In particular, a driftless diffusion process is a local martingale, but not necessarily a martingale.
Local martingales are essential in , see Itō calculus, semimartingale, Girsanov theorem.
Let (Ω, F, P) be a probability space; let F∗ = { Ft | t ≥ 0 } be a filtration of F; let X : [0, +∞) × Ω → S be an F∗-adapted stochastic process on set S. Then X is called an F∗-local martingale if there exists a sequence of F∗-stopping times τk : Ω → [0, +∞) such that
Let Wt be the Wiener process and T = min{ t : Wt = −1 } the time of first hit of −1. The stopped process Wmin{ t, T } is a martingale; its expectation is 0 at all times, nevertheless its limit (as t → ∞) is equal to −1 almost surely (a kind of gambler's ruin). A time change leads to a process
The process is continuous almost surely; nevertheless, its expectation is discontinuous,
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