Understanding speculative investment behavior in the Bitcoin context from a dual-systems perspective

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine users’ decision-making mechanism of speculative investment behavior and its sequential consequences in the Bitcoin context from a dual-systems perspective. Design/methodology/approach Original data were collected via a survey of 334 participants with experience in Bitcoin speculative investment. The partial least squares method was used to test the proposed model. Findings Speculative investment behavior in the Bitcoin context is driven by strong impulse and weak self-control, leading to negative consequences. The extent of the imbalance between the two cognitive systems is greater with the subjective norm than without it, thus facilitating speculative investment behavior. Noteworthy differences in the impulse and self-control effects on Bitcoin speculative investment are found with differences in Bitcoin objective and subjective knowledge. Originality/value This study is the first attempt to empirically investigate users’ decision-making mechanism used when speculating in Bitcoin.

Kuwait Food Company (Americana): Financial Analysis

This case makes an attempt to carry out financial analysis of the performance of Kuwait Food Company with a view to understand if it would be worth investing in it. The case is developed from the perspective of Mohd Hussain, a small investor in Kuwait, who had already lost heavily in speculative investment. Being from a commerce background, he decided to apply his learning from a finance masters class. As he started to explore the company, he was puzzled with the financials of the company. Although Americana’s share prices had increased, the company’s finances were not so impressive. The sales of the company had been increasing in the last three quarters, but the net profit had gone down over the previous few years from KWD 54 million in the year 2011 to KWD 50 million in the year 2012. Even the margins were squeezed for the recent three quarters in 2013. With this information, Hussain knew that several answers were needed before making the investment choices. Was the growth of Americana’s share prices a speculative mania, or did it actually represent value? What were the issues with Americana’s profitability? How was the overall financial health of the business?

Olympus Imaging Fraud Scandal: A Case Study

This case examines the two decade long tobashi scheme by Olympus Imaging Executives to hide $1.7 billion in losses. In the 1980s, a soaring yen and falling dollar caused bottom line income problems for many Japanese companies. Some companies sought to offset the declining revenue with zaiteku, a form of speculative investment. While early activities generated profits in 1987, by 1991 Olympus recorded 2.1 billion losses in yen. Rumors circulated that by the late 1990s, losses had grown larger. Rather than come clean and admit the losses, management continued to ‘double down’ with riskier investments. Olympus created a tobashi scheme to shift losses off the Olympus balance sheet.Olympus created a tobashi scheme to shift losses off the Olympus balance sheet. Companies located in the Cayman Islands were purchased via exorbitant Management and Acquisition Fees. When the first Western President, Michael Woodford, questioned these practices, he was fired after two weeks on the job. Woodford became perhaps the first CEO ever to blow the whistle on his own firm. The subsequent scandal brought arrests of the executive team, an 80% decline in share price, the threat of de-listing on the Tokyo Exchange, and an international look at Japanese Corporate Governance. A detailed list of questions along with extensive teaching notes, bibliography, and references are provided. The case should be of interest in an accounting audit, ethics, governance, or international accounting class.

This Time Is Different: An Example of a Giant, Wildly Speculative, and Successful Investment Mania

The literature on manias and bubbles is dominated by spectacular collapses and the question of whether they could have been foreseen. What is not widely known, though, is that there was at least one giant and wildly speculative investment episode that was successful in that it produced above-market profits for original investors. The British railway mania of the 1830s involved real capital investment comparable, as a fraction of GDP, to about $2 trillion for the U.S. today. It faced withering skepticism and criticism, much of it very reasonable, as its supposedly rosy prospects were based on extrapolation from the brief experience of just a couple of successful early railways. Yet by the mid-1840s, it was seen as a success.The example of the railway mania of the 1830s serves as a useful antidote to claims that bubbles are easy to detect or that all large and quick jumps in asset valuations are irrational. This episode also suggests the need to reexamine much of the work on business cycles and the diffusion of technologies. The standard literature in this area, starting from Juglar and continuing through Schumpeter to more recent authors, almost uniformly ignores large investment mania, whose nature does not fit the stereotypical pattern.