Author(s): Syed Raziuddin Ahmad, Odunayo Magret Olarewaju, Ijaz Ali, Asif Baig & Imran Ahmad Khan
In this paper, we examine whether investors are misled by misstatements of profits and, if so, when. We focus on the period from the start of the fraud to its discovery. The results show that when the profit benchmark is achieved by misstatement, investors notice the existence of misstatement (profit management by misstatement) and discount the stock price to a lower value, but in other cases, they do not notice the misstatement. Additional verification confirms that investors do not notice anomalies in the financial figures due to the increase in the accumulated amount of misstatements. These results show that investors cannot distinguish between misstated profits and other profits and use them directly in their decision-making in most cases except when management's motives are obvious.