Pattern Detail

Bullish Kicking

Two-candle bullish reversal: a full-bodied down candle, then a gap up into a full-bodied up candle with no overlap.

A real Bullish Kicking on NQ daily bars, Aug 23, 2011. Price then followed through 5.2% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.
A real Bullish Kicking on NQ daily bars, Aug 23, 2011. Price then followed through 5.2% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.

Shown only on the markets where this pattern occurs.

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How to read this

Everything here is in R, the setup's own risk. 1R is the distance from the entry (the pattern's closing price) to where it would be proven wrong — its lowest low over the 2 bars that form it. So "offered 2R" means price ran twice that distance in your favor at some point before the stop. It does not assume you took profit there: a target is a strategy choice.

Room offered (≥ 1R)

40.0%

Too few to trust

Offered at least 1× its risk before the stop, vs 41.8% for a random long entry (-1.8 pts).

Move size vs normal

1.86×

Realized range over the next 20 bars vs a random bar. Precedes a bigger move.

Typical room (20-bar)

1.21R

Average run in favor (capped at 3R), vs 1.09R for a random long entry.

Summary

Offered ≥1R 40.0% of the time vs 41.8% for a random long entry. The 1.8-point gap is no bigger than the ±43.2-point margin of error you would get by chance from 5 occurrences. Not a reliable edge.

Room offered, this setup vs a random long entry

Only 5 occurrences. The breakdown below is shown in full, but a sample this small is anecdotal, a hint, not a measured edge. That is usually a limit of available history, not a flaw in the pattern. For a firmer read, try a lower timeframe or a more active instrument.

Outcome This setup Random entry Edge
Offered ≥ 1R 40.0% 41.8% -1.8
Offered ≥ 2R 20.0% 28.0% -8.0
Offered ≥ 3R 20.0% 19.9% +0.1
Stopped < 1R 20.0% 56.4% -36.4
Went sideways 40.0% 1.8% +38.2

5 occurrences · 355,242 random-entry controls · 20-bar horizon

A bullish kicking pattern is a sharp two-candle flip. The first candle is a full-bodied down candle with little or no wick, all selling. The next candle gaps straight up and is a full-bodied up candle, all buying. Price kicks from one extreme to the other with a clean gap in between, and the abrupt change of hands is the whole signal.

How to spot it

  • The first candle is a full-bodied down (red) candle with little or no wick.
  • The second candle gaps up, opening above the first candle’s close.
  • The second candle is a full-bodied up (green) candle with little or no wick.
  • The two candles do not overlap, leaving clean air between them.
  • The cleaner both bodies and the wider the gap, the stronger the kick.

The dashed box on the chart above marks the two candles on a real occurrence, with the decline before and the move after.

The psychology

The first candle is selling at its purest. A full body with almost no wick means price opened high, fell all day, and closed on its lows without buyers ever putting up a fight. As that bar finishes, the sellers look completely in command.

Then the market gaps straight up and never looks back. The second candle opens above the first one’s close, leaving clean air below it, and runs higher into another full body with no wick. There is no overlap, no handoff, no contest in between. Price has simply leapt from one camp to the other overnight. The sellers who closed the prior bar on the lows are now staring at a market that opened well above them, and every one of them is offside from the first tick. That gap is the kick: control changes hands in an instant rather than through a slow tug of war.

How often such a violent flip carries through is the question the figures below take up.

Does it actually work?

A pattern is a setup, not a trade, so the honest question is not “did it win” but “how much room did it tend to offer before it was proven wrong.” The tabs below answer that across five futures markets (Nasdaq, S&P 500, gold, crude oil, natural gas) and seven timeframes from one minute to one day.

For each occurrence we measure the room the move offered in units of the pattern’s own risk, then set it against what a random entry on the same market would have done. When the pattern offers more room more often than chance, that shows up as a real edge. When it does not, the page says so plainly.

Read it with the sample size in view. On the faster timeframes a pattern can fire thousands of times, enough to trust. On the daily chart it is far rarer, so treat those numbers as a hint rather than a verdict. Thin samples are flagged for you on the page.

How we measured it

  • Entry is the close of the final candle of the pattern.
  • One unit of risk, 1R, is the distance from that close down to the pattern’s invalidation point: the lowest low of the two candles that form it. If price trades through there, the setup is wrong.
  • We then follow the next 20 bars and record how far price ran in your favor, in multiples of that risk, before the stop was hit.
  • Every figure is set against a random entry on the same market and timeframe, so the market’s own drift is accounted for.
  • No profit target and no position sizing. Where you take profit is a strategy choice; this measures only the room the pattern tends to give.

What this page does not cover

  • Volume on the pattern’s candles.
  • Whether the pattern forms at a meaningful support level.
  • Pairing it with a trend filter or a confirming signal.
  • A profit target or position sizing. We use the pattern’s own invalidation point as the stop to define risk, but where you take profit, and how much you put on, are strategy decisions this page leaves to you.

Sample Bullish Kicking Firings (5)

Based on data through Apr 29, 2026

Time Risk (pts) Room offered Result
Jul 14, 2023, 8:30 AM CDT 52.5 1.90R Ran ≥1R
Jul 1, 2013, 8:30 AM CDT 28 0.60R Flat
Jan 15, 2009, 11:40 AM CST 4 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Dec 16, 2008, 2:50 PM CST 8.5 0.47R Stopped
Mar 18, 2008, 8:30 AM CDT 36.75 0.07R Flat

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