The Federal Open Market Committee meets today and will release their interest-rate decision on Wednesday. That will be followed by Fed Chairman Powell's press conference, always a "can't miss" event for everyone involved in the financial markets. According to the CME FedWatch Tool, the highest probability (subject to massive change) for the first 25-basis-point fed funds cut is at the June 12 meeting -- but that is not a slam-dunk event. By the last meeting of 2024 on December 18, the most-likely scenario for the fed funds rate currently is sitting at three 25-basis-point cuts.

We see what we believe are some great opportunities right now in Healthcare -- and we like the sector overall. Argus Director of Research Jim Kelleher, CFA, recently completed his quarterly sector review and raised Healthcare sector to Over-Weight from Market-Weight. The healthcare environment is undergoing rapid transitions, and we now see an unfolding period of significant promise and opportunity. Our newly-favored stance is based on resumption of deferred medical procedures and significant new quality-of-life drugs and treatments. The category is broad and has underperformed the S&P 500 over the past year. The Healthcare sector ETF (XLV) is up 15% over the past year compared to a gain of 31% for the S&P 500. We see opportunity here to pick up some steady companies, with big brands and solid financials. These companies are science-focused and enhance lives. They are innovators. In our list this week, we look across several subsectors within the Healthcare sector and pull out some leaders we like. These stocks also are included in our Focus List and Model Portfolios, as noted below.

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.

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.

Make it 16 out of 18 weeks to the upside, as the S&P 500 (SPX), Nasdaq, and Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) continued to witness relentless buying in the week ended March 1. Stocks were flat until the final two days of that week, when inflation worries were squashed by the January PCE report. It wasn't just stocks that reacted, as metals, oil, and bonds all popped on March 1. Bitcoin surged 21%.