This pick list highlights constituents of the Morningstar US Mid Cap Index that we believe offer investors the best risk-adjusted return prospects. The market capitalization range for U.S. mid-caps typically falls between $1 billion and $8 billion and represents 20% of the total capitalization of the U.S. equity market.

IQVIA is the result of the 2016 merger of Quintiles, a leading global contract research organization, and IMS Health, a leading healthcare data and analytics provider. The research and development segment focuses primarily on providing outsourced late-stage clinical trials for pharmaceutical, device, and diagnostic firms. The technology and analytics segment provides aggregated information and technology services to clients in the healthcare industry, including pharmaceutical companies, providers, payers, and policymakers, as well as data and analytics capabilities for clinical trials, including virtual trials. The company also has a small contract sales business.

IQVIA Holdings is the world's largest provider of biopharmaceutical development services and commercial outsourcing services. The company is the result of the 2016 merger of Quintiles Transnational, a contract research organization, and IMS Health, a healthcare data and analytics provider. IQVIA is headquartered in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. IQVIA provides advanced analytics, technology solutions, and clinical research services to the life sciences industry in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. It operates through three segments: Technology & Analytics Solutions, Research & Development Solutions, and Contract Sales & Medical Solutions. IQVIA provides intelligent connections across all aspects of healthcare through its analytics, technology, big data resources, and extensive domain expertise. Its Connected Intelligence delivers actionable insights to enable customers to accelerate the clinical development and commercialization of new therapies. The company has about 86,000 employees. IQVIA has one of the largest collections of healthcare information in the world, which includes more than 1.2 billion comprehensive, longitudinal, non-identified patient records spanning sales and prescription data, medical claims, electronic medical records, genomics, and social media.

As stock prices continue to fall, there is little in the weekly insider-sentiment data from Vickers Stock Research to suggest insiders sense opportunity. No, they are not jumping overboard -- but history tells us that when insiders sense a bottom, they are quick to act. And Vickers' data does not suggest that is yet the case. The volume of weekly insider transactions popped this week, partially as earnings season is pretty much over and most insiders are free to trade again. But even so, the jump is larger than expected, with almost 2150 transactions meeting the criteria for inclusion in Vickers' Weekly Insider Report. That's up from 1336 last week. So insiders have been active. On the numbers, Vickers' Total Eight-Week Sell/Buy Ratio is now 4.96, this on a scale where the neutral range runs from 2.00 to 6.00, and anything higher is bearish. Again, there is no sign of full-on panic. But even with the S&P 500 down about 7% over the past month and the Nasdaq down about 11% in the same time, insiders are still not 'jumping in.' That suggests there may be more pain to come for investors. On a sector basis, buying was the greatest in Energy last week, with shares valued at $32 million bought versus $12 million sold. Buying was also notable in the Materials, lagging the level of selling by a factor of just 1.3-times. On the other side of the coin, selling was the greatest in Consumer Discretionary, with shares valued at $373 million sold versus $9 million bought, as well as Healthcare, with $341 million sold versus $27 million bought. This week, analysts at Vickers highlighted insider transactions of interest at Moderna Inc. (NGS: MRNA) and Strategic Education Inc. (NGS: STRA).