In the question, I can’t see why we should assume that Kirk company is holding the equity as ‘available for sale’ and not ‘held to maturity’
Should we always assume that the securities are not held to maturity unless told otherwise ?
EDIT: I think it is because only debt can be held to maturity ? But how do we know that this is not held for trading and using fair value ?
The first part of your edit is correct: held-to-maturity applies only to bonds.
I’d need to read the question to see why it’s not trading or fair value.