Truist Financial was formed through the December 2019 merger of equals between BB&T Corp. and SunTrust Banks. The company now has about $549 billion in assets and ranks as the seventh-largest bank for both assets and deposits in the U.S. The company has around 37,000 employees.

Stock are solidly higher at midday on Friday, with the S&P 500 up about 1.2%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average up about 2%, and the Nasdaq Composite up about 1.5%. Earnings season has managed to grab the attention of investors, as should be the case at this point on the calendar, as the ongoing war in Iran is becoming less of a worry, at least for Wall Street. Iran has announced that the Strait of Hormuz is 'completely open' and there are expectations that diplomatic talks will start up again over the coming weekend. Meanwhile, a ceasefire is in place between Israel and Lebanon and appears to be holding. Turning back to stocks and with a focus on sectors, Consumer Discretionary is atop the leader board today, up over 3% as of this writing, followed by Industrials (+2.15%), and Information Technology (+1.81%). On the bottom of the sector-performance list for the day is (no surprise) Energy. The sector is off about 4.4% today as crude oil is off 10% and at about $81.23/barrel, down from over $100 earlier this week. The only other down sector for the day is Utilities, off 1.45%.

Value stocks -- a market segment that includes high-yield stocks -- outperformed growth stocks in 2022. In 2025, value stocks and growth stocks had similar returns, with growth advancing 13.8% and value returning 13.6%. That's a recent rarity, as for the past decade-plus, the performance record has favored growth. But in 2022, the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines gave a lift to some of the cyclical companies (energy and regional banks), and value stocks outpaced growth stocks that year. While growth stocks led for a few years after that, value stocks are back in the picture as investors rotate out of higher-priced AI growth stocks in search of more reasonable valuations. Value stocks tend to be more resilient in times of market uncertainty and higher volatility as they are less likely to overreact to economic news. In any event, the value sector is the place to achieve income.

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.