TD Ameritrade's August Investor Movement Index: Sentiment And Popular Stocks

TD Ameritrade’s latest Investor Movement Index® (IMX) is out. Using it “along with other market indicators,” investors can get “a more complete view of retail investor sentiment and spot historic trends in the market,” the firm explains.

For instance, when the IMX score surges, it means investors’ recent past activity has tended to a bullish stance. On the other hand, when the score declines, investors’ recent past activity has, by and large, tended towards bearishness.

The August Index

Over August, the IMX fell to 5.24, in a context of increasing volatility in the equity markets. This means that the firm’s clients trimmed their exposure to equity markets over the month.

“Many of the widely held positions in client accounts saw their volatility relative to that of the S&P 500 decrease during the month, and this helped to lower the IMX reading,” TD Ameritrade’s site explains. “Net buying in names that were less volatile than the S&P 500 was also a factor in the decrease.”

Source: TD Ameritrade

Moreover, every major equity market index fell during August, the site notes, mainly driven by concerns surrounding the slowdown in the global economy, bolstered partly by a weakening Chinese Yuan and speculation regarding the timing the Fed’s rate hike.

Trading

The note then looks into some of the stocks the firm’s clients traded the most. Taking advantage of the lower stock prices, the customers were net buyers in Twitter Inc TWTR, Walt Disney Co DIS, Netflix, Inc. NFLX andAT&T Inc. T. Other names that saw plenty of buying activity include Freeport-McMoRan Inc FCX andExxon Mobil Corporation XOM.

Despite the wide seloff, “TD Ameritrade clients appeared to find some key names to take profits in,” the site adds. Sirius XM Holdings Inc. SIRI was “a net sell as it appeared to reach a key level of resistance around $4 per share.”

Citigroup Inc C reached a new 52-week high in July and remained closed to those levels into August, leading the firm’s clients to sell. Same was the case for McDonald's Corporation MCD and Delta Air Lines, Inc. DAL, “both of which have been range bound in 2015.”

Other popular names that saw plenty of selling included Yahoo! Inc. YHOO and Alcatel Lucent SA (ADR) ALU.