What is Wick / Shadow?

The thin line beyond a candle's body — proof that price visited a level and was rejected from it.

A wick, also called a shadow or tail, is the thin line extending above or below a candlestick's body, marking prices that traded during the period but did not hold by the close. A wick is a receipt of rejection: price travelled there, met opposing orders, and was pushed back. A long lower wick shows sellers drove price down and buyers absorbed the selling and reversed it; a long upper wick shows buyers pushed up and sellers took the price back.

Wicks earn special attention around liquidity. When price sweeps an obvious high or low, the sweep usually survives on the chart as a long wick beyond the level with the close back inside — the visual fingerprint of stops being collected and the move rejected. Wicks also refine zone-drawing: many traders anchor their zones and stop placements to wick extremes, because that is the full range the market actually defended. As always, size and location together make the signal — a huge rejection wick at a swept swing low inside a demand zone says far more than a routine wick in the middle of a range.