Utility-Invariant Support Selection and Eventwise Decoupling for Simultaneous Independent Multi-Outcome Bets

Abstract

For simultaneous independent events with finitely many outcomes, consider the expected-utility problem with nonnegative wagers and an endogenous cash position. We prove a short support theorem for a broad class of strictly increasing strictly concave utilities. On any fixed support family and at any optimal portfolio with positive cash, summing the active first-order conditions and comparing that sum with cash stationarity yields the exact identity \[ \fracλ{K_{\ell}^{(U)}}=\frac{1-P_{\ell,A}}{1-Q_{\ell,A}}, \] where $P_{\ell,A}$ and $Q_{\ell,A}$ are the active probability and price masses of event $\ell$, $λ$ is the budget multiplier, and $K_{\ell}^{(U)}$ is the continuation factor seen by inactive outcomes of that event. Consequently, after sorting each event by the edge ratio $p_{\ell i}/π_{\ell i}$, the exact active support is the eventwise union of the single-event supports, and this support is independent of the utility function. The single-event utility-invariant support theorem is already explicit in the free-exposure pari-mutuel setting in Smoczynski and Miles; the point of the present note is that the simultaneous independent-events analogue follows from the same state-price geometry once the right continuation factor is identified.