What’s this, a gift? After wallowing deep in the red for most of yesterday’s session, stocks put on a strong rebound in the last hour of trading. The Nasdaq, the laggard for most of June, actually ended with a solid 17-point gain.

I call this intraday pattern a “gift” because it allows value-oriented investors the luxury of buying low early in the session and showing a profit even before the day is out. I was actively buying in the first half of yesterday’s trading, and I hope you were, too. This is not a time to be selling anything.

That advice includes, by the way, any stocks or funds you may be holding at a paper loss. There will be plenty of opportunity, later on, to review your holdings and dispose of investments that no longer possess the profit potential you originally thought.

Smart investors take their profits and their losses during periods of market strength, not weakness. To sell into an oversold market like the one we’re in now is financial suicide. Don’t do it!

One group I was buying with particular eagerness yesterday was oil stocks. Oil prices dropped sharply after the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that its member governments will inject 60 million barrels of emergency reserves of crude into the market over the next 30 days.

This is obviously a temporary measure, aimed at easing the oil shortage stemming from the loss of production in war-torn Libya. Three to six months from now, the IEA move will be forgotten — and the robust supply/demand fundamentals for oil will have pushed prices back up.

Meanwhile, oil stocks like Chevron (NYSE: CVX), Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) and Total (NYSE: TOT) are coining money. I figure all three of the oil stocks to buy will return 20% or more, including dividends, within the next 12 months.