Kicker Candlestick Pattern: How to Read Bullish and Bearish Kickers

A kicker candlestick pattern is two tall candles of opposite color where the second opens beyond the first candle's open, so the bodies never overlap. A bullish kicker is a red candle, then a green one that gaps above it. The bearish kicker is the mirror. Kicking is the Japanese name for the same thing. It's rare, it mostly prints on daily stock charts after overnight news, and the one published test I know of is a lot less flattering than its reputation.

Quick Answer

What Is a Kicker Candlestick Pattern?

TA-Lib, the open-source indicator library, defines kicking as "two opposite-color marubozu (long bodies with very short shadows) separated by a price gap," with the direction set by the second candle. Kicker and kicking are the same pattern under two names.

The gap test: candle 2's open against candle 1's open

Guides disagree on the gap, and it decides whether you have a kicker at all. The strict rule, used by most guides, compares the second candle's open with the first candle's open. In a bullish kicker the first candle is red, so its open is the top of its body. Opening above it puts the whole second body above the whole first one. Strict readers also want no shared wicks.

Loose versions in a few broker glossaries only ask candle 2 to open past candle 1's close. For a bullish kicker that close is the bottom of the red body, so candle 2 can open inside the first body. That might be a strong reversal day. It isn't a kicker, because the gap over the whole first body is the pattern.

Common mislabels include a gap after a doji (no full first body), a small gap candle (no full second body), a gap that fills the same session, and an hourly EUR/USD "kicker" with no gap at all.

How full do the bodies need to be?

Textbook kickers use two marubozu candles, bodies with no wick at either end (the marubozu breakdown covers the single candle). Most guides tolerate small shadows. For scale, thinkorswim's pattern library treats a shadow under 5% of the average body as missing. That's one vendor's cutoff, not a standard, and one broker guide says body size barely matters. Bulkowski's tip is to "select tall candles for the best performance."

Bullish Kicker vs Bearish Kicker: What Changes?

A bullish kicker is a tall red candle followed by a tall green one that opens above the red candle's open. A bearish kicker is the mirror image, a tall green candle followed by a tall red one that opens below the green candle's open. Here are the two side by side, with Bulkowski's numbers.

Most guides call it a reversal, bullish after a decline and bearish after a rally. Bulkowski lists the prior trend as "None required," and LuxAlgo calls it traditionally irrelevant. Where it works best is a separate question. Bulkowski's preferred bullish setup is "a bearish retracement in an upward price trend," a kicker that ends a pullback inside an uptrend. That's a trend-resumption trade, the shape a momentum trading strategy hunts for, and the version I'd rather trade.

Why Does the Gap Matter So Much?

A gap over the whole first body means the market repriced while it was closed. In a bullish kicker, everyone who sold on day one is underwater at the next open, with no chance to get out in between. That's why most guides tie kickers to an overnight catalyst such as earnings, guidance, an upgrade, or a regulatory or takeover headline.

It also explains why kickers live on daily stock charts. Sources split on timeframes. Some call daily and weekly charts the cleanest, others say any timeframe works. Intraday, the overnight gap exists only at the session open, so that is the one place a 5-minute kicker can print. Two candles at 11:30 almost never leave a full gap.

Why are kickers rare on forex and crypto charts?

Spot forex runs from the Sunday open to the Friday close and spot crypto never closes, so a new candle almost always opens at the last close. Real gaps cluster at the forex weekend open and in thin books. A couple of broker guides still rate kickers in forex, but an hourly EUR/USD or BTC "kicker" is usually two big opposite candles sharing a price. Judge it on the level and the next candle.

Is the Kicker Candlestick Pattern Reliable?

Many guides rank it among the most reliable reversals. The one published test I know of disagrees. Thomas Bulkowski's bullish kicking page reports "Bullish reversal 53% of the time," with ranks of 96 for performance and 100 for frequency. All ranks are out of 103 candlestick patterns, and on both, 1 is the top, so 100 for frequency means rare. His bearish kicking page says "Performance is lousy. It acts as a bearish reversal just 54% of the time, so that is near random." It ranks 102 on both, and he found just 116 of them in over 4.7 million candle lines.

Those are breakout tests. In his bearish example, the breakout counts as downward when price closes below the bottom of the pattern. So 53% and 54% say which way price broke on his sample. They are not trade win rates. His advice on the bullish page: "do not try to guess the breakout direction from this candle pattern." A kicker tells you something big happened. The rest of the chart decides whether there's a trade.

How Do You Trade a Kicker?

Wait for candle 2 to close

Candle 2 isn't a kicker until it closes. A stock can gap above yesterday's open at 9:30 and be back inside yesterday's body by lunch. One guide suggests entering just before the close. The Right Trader calls entering during day two "how fake kickers get you." I agree with the second.

What makes one worth trading

Context does the work here, as across the candlestick family. Candle 2's volume should clearly beat the recent bars, though no guide gives a number. A kicker at support, resistance or the end of a pullback beats one mid-range. Chop and thin names produce the junk, and Bulkowski notes that "unless the stock is thinly traded, you may find only a handful in your lifetime." An oversold RSI or a MACD turn adds a little, never enough to rescue a kicker with no level under it.

Entry, stop and target

• At candle 2's close, or the next open
  The usual entry, at the most extended price and the widest stop.
• On a break of candle 2's high (low if bearish)
  Filled only if the move carries on. A worse price, fewer stalled fills.
• On a pullback toward the gap
  A limit order above candle 1's open. The smallest stop and the best multiple, if it ever fills.
• On a lower timeframe the next session
  A higher low above the gap on a 5- or 15-minute chart. Tighter stop, more work.

Stops come in two camps. Wide sits past candle 1's far end. Tight sits just past the gap edge, candle 1's open, because a close back inside the first body kills the pattern. Wide survives noise and costs size, while tight matches the invalidation and gets hit more. On a daily kicker wide gets wide fast. RoboForex's TSLA example (August 2020) used a 107.55 entry and a 90.90 stop under candle 1's low, about 15.5% of the entry.

Target the next resistance or prior swing high (support or a swing low for a bearish kicker), or a measured move the height of candle 2. Measure it before you enter, because the tall candle has often used most of it up.

Checks before you trust a kicker

Run these on the chart you have open. Each one is a pass or a fail.

• Open past the open
  Candle 2 opens beyond candle 1's open, not just its close.
• Two full bodies
  Both candles are tall, with shadows small next to the bodies.
• A move into it
  A decline, a rally, or a pullback inside a trend.
• A level
  Support, resistance or a prior swing, not the middle of a range.
• Volume
  Candle 2's volume bar clearly beats the recent ones.
• The gap held
  Candle 2 closed outside the first body, and the next candle did not close back in.
• Room to the next level
  The distance to it beats your stop distance by your minimum multiple.

Worked example: the stop math of a tall second candle

These prices are invented. They are an example, not data. A red candle opens at 52.00 (its high), dips to 48.90 and closes at 49.00. Overnight news hits. The next candle opens at 52.40, holds above 52.30 and closes at 55.60, a strict kicker. The prior swing high is 58.00. The account is $10,000, risking 1% ($100) a trade.

Buying the close of a tall kicker into a nearby swing high is a sub-1R trade at either honest stop. Only the pullback clears 2:1, and strong kickers don't always come back to fill it. The same $100 of risk buys 14 shares or 90, which is why sizing from risk per trade and a reward-to-risk check come before the entry.

How Is a Kicker Different From an Engulfing Candle or a Gap?

A bullish engulfing pattern opens at or below a red candle's close and finishes above its open, so the green body covers the red one. A kicker opens above the red candle's open, so the bodies never touch. Rally only past the midpoint and it's a piercing line. The morning star gaps too, around a small middle candle.

Plenty of gaps aren't kickers either. A kicker gaps against the direction of the candle before it, with full bodies on both sides. The guide to breakaway, exhaustion and common gaps covers the rest, and the chart pattern library has the bigger structures a kicker can sit inside.

When Does a Kicker Fail?

A close back inside the first body kills it. For a bullish kicker that's a close below candle 1's open, and the gap buyers become the trapped side, the same mechanics as a bull trap.

Bullish Bears disagrees ("The gaps on the bullish and bearish kickers also get filled"), and its NFLX example filled the gap, then rose. Plenty of gaps fill, as the gap-fill numbers show. My line is that a dip into the gap that holds above candle 1's open is a retest, and a close inside the first body is a failure.

• No level
  Mid-range, with nothing to turn at.
• Light volume on candle 2
  Few traders voted on the repricing.
• Chop and thin stocks
  Gaps there mean very little.
• The 24-hour pseudo-kicker
  Two big opposite candles with no gap, on an hourly forex or crypto chart.
• Chasing into the next level
  A clean kicker with the next swing closer than your stop. That is plan A.

What Can AI Chart Analysis Read About a Kicker?

I build SnapPChart, so here's what it does with a kicker chart. It grades one static screenshot. It has no kicker signal, doesn't measure gaps, and doesn't scan or predict the next candle. Confirming the gap is on you.

It reads the trade around the candles: trend, structure, the nearest support and resistance, extension, and volume as drawn. Its first read names the candle reaction at the nearest key level, like a rejection wick or an engulfing. You see that line, but it's display-only and doesn't set the grade. A kicker isn't an engulfing (no overlap), so don't expect it named as one.

The grade, A+ to F, answers what a kicker leaves open, which is whether the trade is worth taking. It's built for with-trend setups, so on its default settings a bounce at the bottom of a downtrend reads as that downtrend's short side, not a fresh long (a long-only profile grades the long, with a counter-trend penalty). A kicker ending a pullback in an uptrend is the version it judges cleanly. It doesn't grade your plan A or B. It builds its own entry, stop and target from the chart, and if that plan comes in under 2:1 reward to risk (2.5:1 on forex), the verdict drops to a skip graded F. A stretched move, like a tall kicker running into a nearby swing high, usually comes back as a wait for a pullback or a skip. The AI chart analysis page lists what it reads, and the guide to reading charts with AI walks through a result.