Candlestick Patterns
Kicker Pattern
Most traders blow up chasing the setup they missed, not the one in front of them.Jason Parker, Founder of Trading Habits
One candle closes a direction, the next opens on the opposite side of a genuine gap and keeps going. The size of that gap relative to normal volatility is what separates a kicker from an ordinary color flip.
Watch the gap gauge flag the genuine ones
Press play and the tape prints bar by bar. The needle shows each new bar's opening gap measured in ATR, average true range, so a gap gets judged against this ticker's own normal volatility instead of a fixed dollar amount. Set the ATR threshold that counts as kicker-worthy, then compare how flagged kickers hold up against small, same-size color flips that never gapped far enough to qualify.
Press play to start the tape.
How it works
- The color has to flip. The candle before the gap and the candle after it need to close in opposite directions, a bullish candle following a bearish one or the reverse.
- The gap gets measured against this page's own rolling ATR, not a fixed number. A quiet, low-volatility stretch and a wild one need different gap sizes to count as unusual, so the gauge reads in ATR multiples instead of price.
- A color flip with a small gap is just noise, not a kicker. This page tracks that comparison directly so it stays visible instead of assumed.
- Continuation is checked exactly 5 bars later against the flagged bar's own close. That is one specific, fixed way to measure it, a longer or shorter window can tell a different story from the same tape.
- No news event actually created these gaps. On a genuine chart, a kicker is almost always a reaction to something, earnings, an upgrade, a headline. This simulation only tests the shape of the gap, not the reason behind it.
Where this breaks
The shape doesn't know why the gap happened
A kicker's reputation as one of the more reliable reversal shapes comes from what usually causes it, a genuine piece of news forcing a fast repricing that leaves the old direction stranded. This simulation can only test the geometry: did the color flip, was the gap big enough relative to recent volatility. It has no concept of an earnings beat, a guidance cut, or an analyst call, the actual reasons a genuine kicker tends to work. Two gaps that look identical on a chart, one driven by genuine news and one driven by thin overnight liquidity in an illiquid name, will score the same on this page and behave very differently in a live market. The shape is a necessary condition here, never treat it as a sufficient one.
