Last Monday, I opined “This bear market isn’t over yet, but the end may be closer than most people think. If so, that creates a once-in-a-decade opportunity for investors with the courage to act when the time comes.”

It looks like my timing may have been spot on.

Later that same day, the Federal Reserve announced several measures that will pump more than a trillion dollars into the bond market. The following day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 2,100 points for its biggest single-day point gain ever.

The good news didn’t stop there. The day after that, the Senate approved a $2.2 trillion stimulus plan to keep the global economy afloat. The stock market reacted favorably to that news, too, and the Dow jumped another 495 points. In less than 48 hours, the Dow had rallied 14%.

Given the stock market’s sudden resurgence, you may be wondering if it is too late to profit from its recovery. It is not. To quote Sir Winston Churchill: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Now that there is some good news to offset the bad, I expect the stock market to trade in a relatively narrow range over the next several weeks. During that time, it may even retest last week’s low point as the full impact of the coronavirus becomes increasingly clear.

However, I do not expect it to break below last week’s low. Nor do I think it will move considerably above last week’s high. That means you still have time to act if you want to profit from the stock market’s eventual recovery.

Get Your List Together

Starting in mid-April, companies will report their Q1 results. Many of them will also provide guidance for the remainder of this year. We know the news will not be good. But for some of them, it won’t be as bad as feared, either.

Given the degree to which many stocks have been devalued over the past two months, it won’t take much to appease the market. And with bond yields at historic lows, investors will be looking for an excuse to get back into stocks.

If you want to participate in the stock market’s recovery, you must have a shortlist of names to buy. Last week, my colleague John Persinos identified several tech stocks that should bounce back strongly in the months to come. That’s a good place to start.

Read this article: Investing in a Post-COVID World

However, assembling a list of stocks to buy is only half the battle. To profit from it, you must be willing to start buying those stocks before the rally gets going in earnest.

That’s the hard part. Bear market bottoms are obvious in hindsight but difficult to recognize in real time. You never know if another bout of unexpected bad news will jolt the market one more time before the worst is over.

I don’t know that, either. But at this point, the news couldn’t get much worse. We already know:

• COVID-19 will intensify in the weeks to come before it starts to subside.
• Economic productivity has dropped off a cliff during the past month.
• More than 3 million Americans filed for unemployment last week.

And we know April will probably be a financial washout, too.

Time to Make Your Move

All of that news has already been priced into the market. At this point, buying back into stocks is effectively a bet that the coronavirus pandemic will peak next month and then fade out over the summer.

If that happens, the stock market will most likely bottom out over the next 30 days before staging a steady recovery over the remainder of the year. I don’t expect it to go roaring back to where it was two months ago, but it may regain half that amount within the first six months of the rally.

That’s the part you can’t afford to miss. In percentage terms, the first half of a recovery is where the biggest gains are made. The safest way to participate is to buy into a broad market index fund such as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY).

To further magnify your gains, consider buying into sectors that should outperform the overall market. For example, the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK) is an easy way to piggyback on the tech sector’s performance.

In addition to tech stocks, I believe the health care sector will benefit from the renewed emphasis on medical readiness. Everyone’s consciousness has been raised about the economy’s vulnerability to an unexpected crisis.

You could buy a sector fund such as the iShares S&P Global Healthcare ETF (IXJ). But if you really want the potential for a huge gain, buying a few individual stocks could be considerably more lucrative.

There is one health services company I’ve had my eye on for a while that I believe is about to take off. The good news is there is still time to buy it before it makes an announcement soon that could revolutionize the entire health sector.

This one biotech has developed a new cure for chronic pain and its stock could skyrocket by as much as 4,450% or more.

You’ve probably never heard of the company. Wall Street analysts are ignoring it. But now’s the time to invest. Learn more by clicking here.