Let X = (Xₜ,ℱₜ) be a continuous BMO-martingale, that is, , where the supremum is taken over all stopping times T. Define the critical exponent b(X) by
,
where the supremum is taken over all stopping times T. Consider the continuous martingale q(X) defined by
.
We use q(X) to characterize the distance between ⟨X⟩ and the class of all bounded martingales in the space of continuous BMO-martingales, and we show that the inequalities
hold for every continuous BMO-martingale X.