English

Exact Finite-Horizon Quantile Kelly for Repeated Multi-Outcome Events

Optimization and Control 2026-04-21 v1

Abstract

We formulate and prove an exact finite-horizon quantile theorem for repeated identical multi-outcome Kelly wagering in wealth-profile / Arrow--Debreu coordinates. For a fixed mm-outcome event repeated independently over a horizon nn, the terminal wealth induced by a one-period wealth profile WW is a monomial WNW^N in the multinomial count vector NN. We show that every fixed upper quantile of terminal wealth is a positively homogeneous piecewise-monomial function on the closed Arrow--Debreu wealth simplex, equivalently piecewise linear in log-wealth coordinates on the positive interior. The pieces are indexed by the chambers of the multinomial count arrangement, and on each chamber the quantile objective is exactly a one-period Kelly objective for a count-based \emph{shadow law} k/nk/n. Consequently the finite-horizon quantile problem decomposes into finitely many shadow-Kelly subproblems. We then refine the interior chamber picture to a finite stratification of the full closed simplex by support faces and arrangement faces, and we prove a weak exact recursive boundary algorithm. We also prove a natural first-order asymptotic collapse to ordinary Kelly, showing that the optimal scaled log-quantile converges to the ordinary Kelly value and that exact finite-horizon maximizers converge to the Kelly wealth profile. For illustration, we include worked binary and ternary examples in the main text and expanded versions in the appendices. We conclude with further remarks and conjectures concerning stronger pruning, higher-order finite-horizon corrections, and extensions to simultaneous wagers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.17577,
  title  = {Exact Finite-Horizon Quantile Kelly for Repeated Multi-Outcome Events},
  author = {Christopher D. Long},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.17577},
  year   = {2026}
}

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26 pages, 0 figures