Sunday, September 11, 2016

martingale - How to prove martingality of forward rate under T-forward measure


Let P(t,T)=EQR[eTtr(u)du|Ft] be the price of a 1-euro zero-coupon bond with maturity T and r(u) the interest rate process. Consider the the forward rate logP(t,T)T. How to prove that the forward is a martingale under QT? QT is the T-forward measure with P(t,T) as the numeraire.


It feels like a very basic question, however I truly cannot find any proofs on the internet.



Answer




For the instantaneous forward, please see the last page of this note: T-Forward Measure by Fabrice Douglas Rouah (http://www.frouah.com/finance%20notes/The%20T-Forward%20Measure.pdf).


For the simple forward, you know the relationship between the price of the zero coupon and the simple forward:


P(t,Tn)P(t,Tn+1)=1+τF(t,Tn)


Which you can rearrange to get:


F(t,Tn)P(t,Tn+1)=1τ(P(t,Tn)P(t,Tn+1))


So the left hand side is the price of an asset as it is a difference of the price of two bonds divided by the time fraction (accrual factor). And if you use P(t,Tn+1) as a numeraire, then you get from the general valuation formula:


F(t,Tn)P(t,Tn+1)P(t,Tn+1)=ET[F(S,Tn)P(S,Tn+1)P(S,Tn+1)|Ft]


And simple algebra gives:


F(t,Tn)=ET[F(S,Tn)|Ft]


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