On the semimartingale property of discounted asset-price processes


Abstract in English

A financial market model where agents trade using realistic combinations of buy-and-hold strategies is considered. Minimal assumptions are made on the discounted asset-price process - in particular, the semimartingale property is not assumed. Via a natural market viability assumption, namely, absence of arbitrages of the first kind, we establish that discounted asset-prices have to be semimartingales. In a slightly more specialized case, we extend the previous result in a weakened version of the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing that involves strictly positive supermartingale deflators rather than Equivalent Martingale Measures.

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