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Checking whether B cubed has zero drift

Question

Let BB be a standard Brownian motion. Is the process Bt3B_t^3 a martingale? Justify your answer.

Short answer

No. By Ito, d(Bt3)=3Bt2 dBt+3Bt dtd(B_t^3)=3B_t^2\,dB_t+3B_t\,dt, which has a non-zero drift. Concretely E[Bt3∣Fs]=Bs3+3(t−s)Bs≠Bs3\mathbb{E}[B_t^3\mid\mathcal F_s]=B_s^3+3(t-s)B_s\ne B_s^3. The corrected process Bt3−3tBtB_t^3-3tB_t is a martingale.

Adapted from Zhou, A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews, sec. 5.4 Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus, 'Ito's lemma B', p.135; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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