Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2023 / ii / Paper 1 / 30K / d / Solution

Condition on the information available before time $n$. The current wealth is then fixed, while ${\xi }_n\sim N(b,\Sigma )$ is independent of that information. PutFor any portfolio $\theta$, use the inner product induced by the positive-definite matrix $\Sigma$ to writeThe linear image of a multivariate normal vector shows that the two portfolio returns are jointly normal, andThus independence of uncorrelated jointly normal variables makes the residual return ${\eta }^T{\xi }_n$ independent of the aligned return; it also has expected value zero.

The continuation value $V(n,\cdot )$ is concave by part (c). Conditional Jensen inequality therefore shows that adding the independent centered residual cannot improve the objective:where $m=(1+r)X_{n-1}$. Since the optimal portfolio is unique, its residual must be zero.

It remains to determine the sign. If $\lambda <0$, the portfolios $\lambda {\Sigma }^{-1}b$ and $-\lambda {\Sigma }^{-1}b$ have the same return variance, namely ${\lambda }^{2}B$, while their means are $\lambda B$ and $-\lambda B$. The latter return has the distribution of the former plus the positive constant $-2\lambda B$. Since $V(n,\cdot )$ is increasing, replacing $\lambda$ by $-\lambda$ cannot reduce the objective, contradicting uniqueness. Hence $\lambda \ge 0$.

Applying this conditional argument at every time gives nonnegative, past-measurable random variables ${\lambda }_n$ such thatThis is the Gaussian one-fund theorem.

Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.