August 7th, 2008, 2:00 pm
I agree with TheBridge, this ratio doesn't seem to have any immediate meaning (at least not to me). However, if you think of dW1 and dW2 as dW1 = N1 sqrt(dt) and dW2 = N2 sqrt(dt) where N1,N2 are independent standard Gaussian random variables, then dW1/dW2 = N1/N2 = C and it is well-known that C has a standard Cauchy distribution : P(x < C < x+dx) = dx / Pi * (1+x^2) ; so C is symmetrical (C = -C in distribution) but it's not integrable, i.e. its expectation is undefined.Be careful, you could be tempted to think that even if the expectation is undefined you may "act as if it was 0" since the distribution is symmetrical. For example if (Cn) is a sequence of iid Cauchy variables then the sample mean (C1+...+Cn)/n does NOT converge to 0, not even in some weak sense (in fact the sample mean has the same distribution as C1, this is stability of index 1).