Yahoo FinanceThe IMX Score Rebounded In December, Demonstrating Growing Optimism Around Economic Recovery
TD Ameritrade’s Investor Movement Index (IMX) — a monthly behavior-based index that indicates the attitude of retail investors — rebounded in the month of December, reaching the highest point in almost three years.
The IMX increased to 6.26 in December, up 15.71% from its November score of 5.41. The index goes up when clients are net buyers and goes down when clients are net sellers.
During the month of December, clients were net buyers overall and were net buyers of equities.
“To cap off a tumultuous year, the positive headlines in December offered an opportunity for TD Ameritrade clients to increase their exposure to the markets,” said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade.
One such headline that increased exposure was the growing optimism among investors that Congress would pass a much-needed second stimulus package. This promising update came after months of prolonged negotiations within the White House.
Positive vaccine news also came through as a key FDA advisory panel recommended broad distribution of the first COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S, which resulted in the FDA granting emergency authorization to two vaccines.
What TD Ameritrade Clients Bought And Sold
TD Ameritrade clients bought some familiar names during the month of December. Some of these stocks included Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE), Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA), NIO Inc (NYSE: NIO), Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA), and salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE: CRM).
And while clients were net buyers of equities overall, some popular company names that clients sold during the period were Slack Technologies Inc (NYSE: WORK), Fastly Inc (NYSE: FSLY), Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE: OXY), Haliburton Company (NYSE: HAL), and Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR).
"There’s no question that the final trading period of the year reflected a growing sense of optimism around economic recovery and hope for an end to the pandemic. In 2021, however, the pandemic will most likely continue as the No. 1 news story for at least the first half of the year and with that, it will most likely remain the greatest source of market volatility,” said Kinahan.
Photo by Patrick Weissenberger on Unsplash
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