Top Rocket Stocks for Week of March 31

Updated from 7:01 a.m. EDT

It doesn't matter if the market goes up or down. Even if the market has a disastrous, disastrous week, out of the 8,000 or so public companies, there still will be hundreds of stocks that will climb.

Even in the bear market of 2000-2002, the best strategy proved to be selectively finding volatile stocks to go long. One successful intraday strategy is to buy a stock that finished the previous day down and is set to gap down 5% or more the following day. Sell the stock if it hits the previous day's close or if the stock closes the day without hitting the profit target.

Back testing shows this strategy to be successful 68.4% of the time with an average profit of 1.97% per trade.

Before we get to this week's Rocket Stock portfolio, let's look at how last week's picks fared.

• Baidu.com (BIDU Quote): Up 14.9% on the week as the company named Jennifer Li as its chief financial offer.
• Borders Group (BGP Quote): Up 12.2% for the week.
• 3Com (COMS Quote): This stock, which triggered a buy on Stockpickr.com's 3x2 trader system, ended the week up 10.6%. The company came out and report better-than-expected earnings and was upgraded by Bernstein.
• National Oilwell Varco (NOV Quote): Up 10% on the week as crude oil rallied and helped boost this oversold stock.
• Lindsay (LNN Quote): Up 5.3% on the week after making a fresh 52-week high early Tuesday morning.
• Market Vectors Global Agribusiness ETF (MOO Quote): Up 5.2% on the week as agriculture stocks like Potash (POT Quote) and Terra Nitrogen (TNH Quote) rallied.
• Verizon (VZ Quote): Down 2% on the week.
• New York Community Bancorp (NYB Quote): Down 4.8% on the week as overall credit concerns re-entered the market.
• Robbins & Myers (RBN Quote): Down 6.5% for the week after reporting a 12% decline in its fluid management business.
• Pep Boys (PBY Quote): Down 14.8%.

Now let's take a look at a couple of picks from the Rocket Stocks for the Week of March 31-April 4.

One stock worth keeping an eye on this week is Nortel Networks (NT Quote), which on March 20 hit a new 52-week low of $5.73. While it's now back around $6.42, the stock is well off the 52-week high of $26.49 it hit back in June.

Last week, the CEO of Nortel bought 79,000 shares for prices ranging between $6.20 and $6.37 per share. That kind of buying suggests the stock offers a great value here. Nortel has a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 6.6 and stated book value of $6.30 per share.

Also last week, Nortel won a five-year contract from U.S. Cellular to beef up the wireless company's network. The deal will allow U.S. Cellular, the sixth largest wireless company in the U.S., to keep adding subscribers and provide additional Web browsing services.

Another play to watch is Evergreen Solar (ESLR Quote). With the solar stocks coming back into favor, Evergreen is the best positioned as it has in place a 10-year polysilicon supply deal, which should limit its costs.