Top of the stocks: most bought and sold stocks in August

August served up a fine selection of highs – and yes, I’m talking about equities, not the annual scourge of parents aka the Reading festival; the trading floor served up biotech drama, chip highs and space age bets.

The S&P 500 edged towards 7,800, buoyed by second quarter earnings that soothed nerves over AI spend and a mercifully uneventful inflation print. However, investors could be forgiven for reaching for their oxygen masks after Moderna rocketed 180% on clinical trial results for its personalised mRNA melanoma vaccine. Kudos for making Palantir’s 50% gain look distinctly pedestrian.

Back home, the UK’s heatwave fizzled out into an anticlimactic and rather damp bank holiday, with the FTSE 100 also following suit as it crawled back towards its February high. The FTSE 250, however, staged a minor renaissance, chalking up a 4% plus gain enroute to an all time high. Analysts have been busily revising earnings forecasts upwards, while corporate and financial buyers continue to see the value, hoovering up the yellow-stickered Tate & Lyle, Spire Healthcare and easyJet.

So, which shares and funds were red-hot with UK investors in August, and which were more reminiscent of a wet weekend?

Top ten most bought and sold shares in August

These were the most (and least) popular shares with UK retail investors on three of the largest investment platforms last month:

Source: AJ Bell, ii and IG

The drugs don’t work

AstraZeneca (AZN) had a rather turbulent month. Its proposed mega merger with Bristol Myers Squibb landed poorly, with investors questioning the logic of tying AZ’s fortunes to BMS’s looming patent cliff, not to mention the antitrust scrutiny likely to accompany the combined oncology portfolio. The shares fell nearly 10% in a single session before talks were abandoned.

It was also a mixed bag on the pipeline front. AZ discontinued trials of its lung-cancer immunotherapy challenger to Merck’s Keytruda, following in the steps of Wainua. But positive results in lung cancer and asthma trials lifted the shares by almost 10%.

Despite the volatility, UK investors continued to see value in one of the UK’s crown jewels. The broader biotech sector has hit record highs as investors look beyond the Magnificent Seven for growth, and AZ joined a select group agreeing to lower drug prices in exchange for tariff relief, removing a lingering policy overhang.

Life on Mars

SpaceX (SPCX) may have topped buy lists but fell sharply back to earth after its first earnings report. Revenue nearly doubled year on year, but a 20 fold increase in AI spend dragged the shares below their $135 IPO price before they recovered to sit around $140.

Source: FE Analytics

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results

As ever with Elon Musk’s brainiac schemes, it’s hard for investors to pin down what they’re actually investing in. Starlink is the golden goose of the piece, with Musk hinting it could compete with the likes of Verizon and AT&T in the terrestrial space.

The launch business is edging towards breakeven but it’s the space vision that excites investors, from colonies on Mars to data centres in space. This may sound fantastical even for Elon Musk, but there’s commercial logic in harnessing a direct source of sunlight without the need for large-scale cooling. Whether that’s deliverable is another matter, not to mention the need for external funding.

Getting chippy with it

Having taken a breather last month, NVIDIA (NVDA) returned to favour, though just as many investors took profits on a one year gain of 30%. With a $5 trillion market cap, quarterly earnings are very much seen as a bellwether for the wider tech sector.

Expectations may have been sky-high for the chip giant but its quarter two results smashed them out of the park, easing nervousness around a slowing of the AI spending boom. Sceptics may say that elephants can’t gallop but this elephant delivered a more than doubling in year-on-year revenue, with operating profit following suit. No mean feat when you consider that annual revenue was just $27 billion in 2023 but topped $200 billion in the last financial year.

The company also issued full-year guidance for the first time, pencilling in 70% revenue growth for FY2028, apparently constrained only by supply. It also launched a financing model allowing customers to use AI chips as collateral, backed by $500 billion of external capital, though the debate about usable asset lives for chips rumbles on.

Best of the rest

Rolls Royce (RR), Legal & General (LGEN) and Vodafone (VOD) all saw buying on weakness, with geopolitical tensions and stubborn oil prices weighing on investor sentiment.

Palantir (PLTR) jumped 50% on spectacular quarterly results as revenue soared by more than 90% and full year guidance was raised. The rally reversed most of the earlier slide driven by fears that AI would erode software stacks.

Bears still point to the European pushback over data sovereignty, though Palantir’s software remains deeply embedded across the US government. With a forward P/E of around 110x, profit taking did seem rather inevitable.

Source: AJ Bell and interactive investor

Once again, growth seekers stocked up on Scottish Mortgage (SMT), which offers a healthy dose of SpaceX, chip giants TSMC and NVIDIA and ByteDance, perhaps best known for TikTok. All eyes were on whether SMT would start to reduce exposure once the first lock-in expired, though the share price fall has reduced its portfolio weighting from 25% to 18%. The managers don’t expect material changes and intend to retain the flexibility to hold a significant stake in the poster child for space investing.

Polar Capital Technology (PCT) is also a SpaceX fan, buying at IPO due to its merits as a “unique, vertically integrated business…at the centre of several attractive, underpenetrated markets” (Arguably space fits this bill better than most). NVIDIA and TSMC also sit in the top five, but it’s more Magnificent Seven focused than SMT. While SMT may sit in pole position, PCT has significantly outperformed it over the last year, serving up a 60%-odd return to SMT’s 35%.

Greencoat UK Wind (UKW) was also popular with investors, topping the buy list on interactive investor. The appeal is straightforward: pure exposure to the economics of UK wind farms and, with it, a dividend yield of just under 10%. However, concerns over the new energy price regime have weighed on the shares, leaving UKW trading at a near 20% discount. For income seekers, the combination of regulated cashflows, a high yield and depressed valuation proved hard to ignore. Meanwhile,The Renewables Infrastructure Group (TRIG) offers a broader remit, blending wind and solar assets to deliver a comparable 10% yield.

Income trusts were in high demand overall, with Murray Income (MUT),Henderson Far East Income (HFEL)andJPMorgan Global Growth & Income (JGGI)also making the cut.

The month ahead

The Fed is openly discussing rate hikes if inflation sticks, and markets seem to be pencilling in an ECB move. A Bank of England hike looks less likely, though three MPC members voted for a raise at the last meeting.

The bigger challenge is borrowing costs: new PM Andy Burnham faces the highest funding costs since 2008, with the 10 year gilt yield at 5.20%. Fiscal headroom is minimal, and while markets might welcome a Musk style chainsaw to public spending, further tax rises look more realistic. Not great news for consumer-facing stocks.

For now, investors may want to lock in this year’s tax free allowances, so here’s our pick of the best ISA platformsandbest SIPP providers.

All data as at 02/09/2026 unless stated otherwise, returns based on share price total returns.