Here's What Investors Were Buying And Selling In August

Another month down and another impressive record set among TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. AMTD clients.

The broker's monthly Investor Movement Index (IMX) report showed that investors with TD Ameritrade remained net buyers for the fourth month straight, making August the third month in a row the index set a new high, now pegged at 7.45.

Some of the bullishness over the course of the month stemmed from increased volatility among a few high-impact stocks like Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN, Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL and AT&T Inc. T. On the other hand, sellers gravitated toward stocks that sustained some headline damage over the course of the month like Nike Inc NKE and Wells Fargo & Co WFC.

Buyers Spot Opportunity In Volatility

Amazon and Alphabet both experienced sustained troughs throughout the month. This marks the first time since late 2016 that Amazon didn't reach a new all-time high in a given month. While Alphabet missed that distinction by falling just short of a new high in July, August did mark one of the stock's longest down periods of the year.

Another stock that was a clear buy among investors was AT&T. After gaining nearly 9 percent following solid earnings in late July, the telecom stock spent much of August slowly giving away some of those gains.

Winners Continue Winning

Other net buys for the month included two top performing stocks: NVIDIA Corporation NVDA and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA. Both stocks found new highs in August after steller earnings reports. Nvidia is up 55 percent in 2017, while Alibaba is up more than 90 percent.

Sellers Hampered By Baggage And Bad Press

Twitter Inc TWTR was among those stocks that the IMX showed were net sold over the course of August. Despite beating analyst estimates, the downward revenue trend turned off investors and lead to a downgrade to hold from analysts with Jefferies.

Other sellers in August included Nike, which suffered from declining sales from retailers like Foot Locker, Inc. FL and Finish Line Inc FINL, and Wells Fargo, whose stock fell on further news of fraudulent customer accounts. The latest news for the bank showed that the number of "potentially unauthorized" could total more than 1 million more than originally estimated.

Check out the video below for more on the August IMX and click here for previous month's results.