Target serves as the nation’s seventh-largest retailer, with its strategy predicated on delivering a gratifying in-store shopping experience and a wide product assortment of trendy apparel, home goods, and household essentials at competitive prices. Target’s upscale and stylish image began to carry national merit in the 1990s—a decade in which the brand saw its top line grow threefold to almost $30 billion—and has since cemented itself as a leading US retailer. Today, Target operates over 1,900 stores in the United States, generates over $100 billion in sales, and fulfills over 2 billion customer orders annually. The firm’s vast footprint is typically concentrated in urban and suburban markets as the firm seeks to attract a more affluent consumer base.

This pick list highlights constituents of the Morningstar US Large Cap Index that we believe offer investors the best risk-adjusted return prospects. Stocks of large-cap companies where neither growth nor value characteristics predominate. Stocks in the top 70% of the capitalization of the U.S. equity market are defined as large cap.

Stocks rose for a third straight day on Wednesday, and the double-bottoms some of the indices were working on appeared to be alive and well. As is often seen at intermediate- to long-term bottoms, the market opened lower and ended the day with strength. But the mood this morning, after tariffs were announced late in the day yesterday, calls into doubt a similar result on Thursday. The "not-so-smart" money often does the trading in the first 30 to 60 minutes of any session -- and that buying/selling can last through the end of the session. The Smart Money Index (SMI) is a technical analysis indicator demonstrating investor sentiment. The index was invented and popularized by money manager Don Hays and is based on intraday price patterns. The main idea is that the majority of traders (who are emotional and news-driven) overreact at the beginning of the trading day because of overnight news and breaking economic data. There is also a lot of buying/selling from market orders and short covering at the opening. Experienced investors start trading closer to the end of the day, having had the opportunity to evaluate market performance. Their basic strategy is to bet not on the morning price trend but instead follow the evening price trend. The SMI may be calculated for many markets and indices. So at least for the past three days, as well as five other days during the S&P 500's first rally off the March 13 low, that seems to be what we witnessed. (Mark Arbeter, CMT)

Target serves as the nation’s seventh-largest retailer, with its strategy predicated on delivering a gratifying in-store shopping experience and a wide product assortment of trendy apparel, home goods, and household essentials at competitive prices. Target’s upscale and stylish image began to carry national merit in the 1990s—a decade in which the brand saw its top line grow threefold to almost $30 billion—and has since cemented itself as a leading US retailer. Today, Target operates over 1,900 stores in the United States, generates over $100 billion in sales, and fulfills over 2 billion customer orders annually. The firm’s vast footprint is typically concentrated in urban and suburban markets as the firm seeks to attract a more affluent consumer base.