Modeling supply chain firms' stock prices in the fertilizer industry through innovative cryptocurrency market big data

Due to the volatility of the markets and the ongoing crises (COVID-19, the Ukrainian war, etc.), investors are keen to exploit any potential chances to make profits. For this reason, the idea of harvesting data from cryptocurrency market users takes an innovative step. Potential investors in supply chain firms in the fertilizer industry need to know whether the observation of data originating from the cryptocurrency market is capable of explaining their stock price variation. The authors identify the innovative utilization of cryptocurrency markets’ user analytical data to model and predict the stock price of supply chain firms in the fertilizer industry stock price. The main aim of this research is to evaluate the contribution of cryptocurrency market big data as a predicting factor for the stock price of fertilizer market firms. Such a finding improves the knowledge and decision-making of potential investors in the fertilizer market. Moreover, this study seeks to highlight the benefits of utilizing cryptocurrency market big data for other financial purposes, apart from stock price prediction. The analytical data was derived from cryptocurrency websites and applications and was then processed through statistical analysis (correlation and linear regressions), Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM), and Hybrid Modeling (HM) modeling. The hybrid model’s simulation showed that analytical data from the cryptocurrency markets tend to explain and predict the stock price of supply chain firms in the fertilizer industry. Such data refer to Bitcoin’s website organic keywords and traffic costs, as well as paid traffic costs from cryptocurrency trade websites/apps. A rise in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency trade websites’ organic and paid traffic costs tend to increase supply chain firms in the fertilizer industry’s stock prices, while Bitcoin’s website organic keywords variation decreases accordingly.