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.

Lam Research supplies wafer fabrication equipment and services that are vital to the production of semiconductors. It offers a range of products used in thin film deposition, plasma etch, photoresist strip, and wafer cleaning processes. Lam has grown its addressable market to about 34% of total industry spending on wafer fabrication equipment, partly by merging with Novellus Systems in 2012. The customer base includes makers of memory and logic chips, with system shipments representing 75%-85% of revenue and services the remaining 15%-25%.

U.S. stocks sold off across the board in Thursday following soft economic data. The ISM manufacturing data hit an 8-month low. The weekly jobless claims rose more than expected. The S&P 500 fell 1.4%, the Dow dropped 1.2% and the Nasdaq lost 2.4%.

Lam Research is one of the largest semiconductor wafer fabrication equipment, or WFE, manufacturers in the world. It specializes in the market segments of deposition and etch, which entail the buildup of layers on a semiconductor and the subsequent selective removal of patterns from each layer. Lam holds the top market share in etch and holds the clear cut second share in deposition. It is more exposed to memory chipmakers for DRAM and NAND chips. It counts as top customers the largest chipmakers in the world, including TSMC, Samsung, Intel, and Micron.