The optimal betting wealth growth rate

Abstract

This paper characterizes the best possible rate of growth of wealth in a Kelly betting game when repeatedly betting against a general i.i.d. null hypothesis $\mathscr{P}$, but the data are drawn i.i.d from an arbitrary alternative $Q$. We prove that it equals $\lim_{n \to \infty}n^{-1}\inf_{P \in (\mathscr P)^n)^{\circ\circ}} \mathrm{KL}(Q^n,P)$, where ${\mathscr P}^n = \{P^n: P \in \mathscr{P}\}$ and $(\mathscr {P}^n)^{\circ\circ}$ is its bipolar, i.e., this rate is achievable and one cannot do better. This quantity is in general smaller than a more popular quantity in the literature, $\mathrm{KL}_{\inf}(Q,\mathscr{P}) := \inf_{P \in \mathscr P}\mathrm{KL}(Q,P)$. If $\mathrm{KL}_{\mathrm{inf}}(\cdot,\mathscr P)$ is weakly lowersemicontinuous (w.l.s.c.) at $Q$, we show that the two quantities are equal; in particular, this happens when $\mathscr P$ is weakly compact. For simple alternatives, we provide the first matching necessary and sufficient condition for when power-one sequential tests exist (without assumptions on $\mathscr P, Q$). We also derive the optimal worst-case growth rate against composite $\mathscr Q$. We emphasize that test supermartingales on reduced filtrations suffice for all i.i.d. testing problems, and more general e-processes are not required. We thus completely generalize the recent results of Larsson et al.~\cite{larsson2025numeraire} to the sequential setting.