Skechers is an athletic shoe and accessories manufacturer and retailer. The company designs, markets, and distributes footwear for men, women, and children, as well as performance footwear for men and women under the Skechers GO brand name. It operates through four segments: domestic wholesale sales, international wholesale sales, retail sales, and e-commerce sales.

Stocks are mixed at midday. Maybe the calm before the storm. This is a big week for earnings with four of the Mag7 reporting. The economic calendar is jam-packed with key data coming on jobs, inflation, and GDP. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note is 4.23%. Oil is down 1.7% at $62 per barrel. Gold is up 1%.

Despite bursts of outperformance, small- and mid-cap stocks (SMID) have underperformed large-caps year to date -- as they have over the past five years. But they may be in a better position to generate market-beating returns going forward. For one thing, SMID companies tend to focus on domestic markets, so their businesses could be less disrupted by the trade and tariff debate, or fallout from unrest in the Middle East, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, issues in China, or other geopolitical developments. As well, the prices of SMID stocks generally are lower than the prices of large-caps. Finally, there are long stretches in the record books when SMID stocks have outperformed large-caps. SMID stocks can be risky, but despite those risks, diversified investors look to have exposure to small- and mid-caps based on the long-term performance record. We estimate that 20% of the U.S. stock market's capitalization is comprised of SMID stocks.

The Vickers Top Buyers & Sellers is a daily report that identifies the five companies the largest insider purchase transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions as well as the five companies the largest insider sales transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions.