Two candles of opposite colour separated by a gap at the open, with no overlap, usually caused by news that repriced the asset.
A bullish kicker is a red candle followed by a green candle that opens above the prior open and never trades back into it. The bearish version is the mirror. Unlike an abandoned-baby there is no middle candle; the handover is immediate.
Kickers almost always reflect an event: earnings, a guidance change, a regulatory decision. The pattern is really a chart description of a repricing, not a psychological sequence.
Treat it as information about a changed situation rather than a trade trigger. Chasing a kicker means buying after a gap with no nearby invalidation level, and the first hours after such a gap are usually the most volatile of the move. Waiting for the opening-range to form gives a definable stop.
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.
The parts of a candlestick. One candle sums up a slice of time: the thick real body runs from the opening price to the closing price, and the thin wicks reach out to the highest and lowest prices traded. Colour tells you which way the body ran.Range versus trend. On the left price keeps bouncing between the same floor and ceiling, which is a range. On the right each high and each low is higher than the last, inside a pair of sloping lines called a channel.
Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.