3 Stocks Flashing Rare Buy Signals After the Market's Wildest Month

Key Points

• The Nasdaq just notched its longest winning streak since July 2009, with the rally landing right as the Iran ceasefire heads into a make-or-break week.
• Short-term signal-based trading thrives in exactly the kind of whiplash conditions investors are seeing right now, with volatility multiplying setups rather than erasing them.
• Tradesmith CEO Keith Kaplan's system flagged United Airlines, DT Midstream and Astera Labs as high-probability short-term setups, each scoring above 95 on quality.

The S&P 500 printed an all-time high. Then a war, an oil shock and a geopolitical gut-punch erased nearly 10% in 30 days. Then, in even less time, the index roared back above 7,000 and set a new record. Gold is hovering near $4,820 an ounce. Oil is swinging between $85 and $110 a barrel on every Strait of Hormuz headline. Inflation just printed 3.3%, the biggest monthly jump since June 2022.

That's the setup. All-time highs during a fragile ceasefire that expires April 22, with the safe-haven trade screaming in the background.

For buy-and-hold investors, it feels like whiplash. For traders who know how to read the data, it's the environment that produces the cleanest setups of the decade.

Volatility Doesn't Kill Signals—It Multiplies Them

The core reframe from Tradesmith CEO Keith Kaplan is this: Rapid, dramatic price swings don't erase repeatable patterns in market data. They force the tape into rare configurations that only surface a handful of times per decade, and those configurations carry the highest historical accuracy and the biggest potential gains.

It's the Jim Simons playbook, pulled into a post-2020 market. Simons averaged 66% annual returns for four decades by ignoring long-term fundamentals and hunting short-term, repeatable mathematical patterns. Kaplan's team has built a machine-learning system that scans roughly 2,500 stocks each morning for those exact fingerprints, then scores each signal against current market conditions.

That matters because the same signal doesn't behave the same way in every tape. Context is the filter.

Three names cleared the filter this week.

United Airlines Stock: A High-Quality Mean Reversion Setup

First on the list is United Airlines Holdings Inc. NASDAQ: UAL. Kaplan's system flagged UAL with a bullish pivot signal, which is Tradesmith's language for a mean reversion setup, and scored it 98.82 out of 100 on quality.

The historical accuracy on this specific fingerprint is 92.41%, with an average return of 6.66% and an average hold time of just over half a month. Annualize that, and the math gets interesting fast.

The key point, and this is what separates signal-based trading from conventional analysis: the setup has nothing to do with fuel costs, booking trends or the latest earnings print. It's a pattern in the price data that has paid out roughly nine times out of 10 when it has fired in the past. The target exit is an 8% move, meaningful for a stock like UAL.

DT Midstream Stock: An Oversold Signal in a Small-Cap Name

The second name is DT Midstream Inc. NYSE: DTM, a natural gas pipeline and storage operator with a market cap just under $14 billion that has only traded publicly since July 2021.

DTM saw a streak of progressively lower closes in March and early April, one of the more reliable oversold fingerprints in Kaplan's system. Quality score: 95.63. Average return when this signal has fired: 8.85%. Historical max loss: under 4%. Win rate: just over nine in 10.

The median win comes in around 10.5%, and the exit is either signal-based or time-based, with a hard stop around a month.

The risk is the one every small-cap trader already knows. Lower float means lower liquidity, so position sizing matters more here than with a name like UAL.

The upside is a clean, oversold setup in a sector that most traders aren't watching right now.

Astera Labs Stock: A Speculative Sprint Signal

The third name is the speculative one. Astera Labs Inc. NASDAQ: ALAB has run hard since its March 2024 debut, and the system tagged it with what Tradesmith calls a sprint category signal. The idea is simple: momentum carrying further.

Quality score on ALAB came in near 100. Historical win rate is almost nine in 10 when this signal has fired, with an average return of 27.22%. The max loss on record is close to 6%, and one prior fire produced a 50% gain.

The wrinkle is that ALAB sold off roughly 5% on the day of filming. Kaplan reads that pullback as a gift, a second entry on top of an already-strong signal.

The risk is obvious, since the last few fires on this specific pattern actually closed at losses. Size accordingly.

What the NASDAQ's Streak Is Telling Traders

Zoom out and the backdrop gets more interesting. The Nasdaq Composite just saw a streak of consecutively higher closes, its longest winning streak since July 2009.

History suggests these streaks tend to be followed by short-term volatility and longer-term strength. The setup is exactly the kind of repeatable pattern Kaplan's system is built to read, and it flashed right as the Iran ceasefire headed into a make-or-break week.

Expect turbulence. Expect signals. The setup favors traders who are paying attention.