The catalyst all along was the U.S. Dollar.

During this US Dollar decline over the past couple quarters, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq100 are each up over 15%.

These tremendous gains for stocks started once the journalists all agreed on how strong the Dollar was at the time.

You can see those implications here.

These are the registration details for our Live Mid-month Conference Call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our Live Call will be held on Monday April 17th at 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Monday night:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Recessionary fears run high.

Everyone is talking about an imminent economic downturn and the next stock market crash.

You hear it on the news and in the streets – talk of the banking crisis, the Fed, inflation, and China pervades the narrative. Even my doctor assured me the world is headed for dark times during a routine appointment earlier this week.

Bearish sentiment is obviously alive and well. 

But, as a chartist, I prefer to visualize these rumblings...

The morning of Good Friday I popped into Fox Business to chat about markets with Maria Bartiromo.

The last time I was on with her, back in October, we discussed how stocks were still in the early stages of a new bull market.

Now that we've seen the S&P500 rally 15% with the Nasdaq100 up 22%, people are starting to believe.

It's been broad based appreciation in stock prices since that October morning.

Every US Sector is positive and many are up over 20%, just since October alone. The numbers are even better when you anchor back to when the new 52-week lows list peaked in June.

Historically, during bull markets you see more and more stocks going up and making new highs. In bull markets you see more sectors participating to the upside and more countries around the world breaking out.

This is exactly what's been happening for about 10 months now.

All these uptrends you're seeing in most stocks is not a new phenomenon.

Did you know Motorola has been around since long before the cellular phone?

In the late 90's and early 2000's, Motorola was one of the go-to cell phone manufacturers. I owned several, personally. To this day, I still maintain that I've never had a clearer signal with zero audio delay than I did with my Motorola StarTac phone circa 2001.

This all came up this morning when internally, while discussing the setup in the $MSI stock, we were all kind of surprised that Motorola, based in Chicago, is a one-hundred year old company! Wow.

Clearly, this is a company that has gone through many pivots to lead new technology development.

Of more immediate concern to us options traders is we've got two potential catalysts that can drive some quick gains for us.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That's why we're turning our attention to the future aristocrats. In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we're curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are "stocks that pay you to make money." Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Trendless price action remains the way right now for currency markets.

Yes, some of our bearish dollar trades have triggered and are trending. But most have not. 

It doesn’t mean they won’t, of course. But it would be irresponsible not to consider potential outcomes that conflict with my bearish USD thesis…

If the dollar rips, what USD dollar pair would I use to express a bullish outlook?

The answer: the South African rand.

Check out the weekly chart of the USD/ZAR pair:

The dollar has been in a strong uptrend versus the rand for more than a decade. It’s been one base breakout after another, leading to the USD/ZAR challenging its all-time highs last month. 

One thing I learned years ago is that you need bulls for there to be a bull market.

In other words, as bull markets progress, stocks stop falling in price, and continue to appreciate despite all the negativity.

This is the beginning of the acceptance phase. It's perfectly normal.

There's nothing like price to change sentiment.

And that's exactly what we have in the current environment.

We have Phillip Streible on the show today.

I'm a big fan of Phil's work. He's the Chief Market Strategist at Blue Line Futures and a market veteran with more than 20 years of experience trading futures and forex.

Today, Phil shares with us his technical perspective on precious metals and discusses key fundamental drivers at play right now.

Check it out:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place. 

Gold priced in USD has finally joined other global currencies, closing last week at an all-time high. Silver, the high-beta play, is outperforming its more reserved cousin (gold). And gold mining stocks are breaking out.

Many of our trade ideas over the past few weeks are working. I believe this trend has just begun and could last for months – or even quarters.

Especially when I consider this next chart…

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

This is one of our favorite bottom-up scans: Follow the Flow.

In this note, we simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity — either bullish or bearish, but not both.

We utilize options experts, both internally and through our partnership with The TradeXchange. Then, we dig through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients.

Our goal is to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.