What It Means
A kicker pattern is a candlestick pattern where a stock gaps sharply in the opposite direction of its prior trend, signaling an abrupt shift in sentiment that happened overnight rather than gradually during trading.
Example
Say a stock has been trending down for a week and closes at ₹280. Overnight, the company announces an unexpected order win, and the stock opens the next session at ₹305 with a long green candle that doesn't overlap the previous day's range at all — that gap-and-reversal combination is a bullish kicker. Traders read it as a sign that the prior trend's logic broke overnight, though like any single-candle pattern, it's usually weighed alongside volume and the next few sessions' follow-through rather than acted on in isolation.