If I may add something to the debate. It comes from what we call human reason, but don't aske me where that comes from.
Hoots has cited an expert on the subject, as has Anf0. Now the question is, from where do the experts gain their knowledge? Do they reason it out themselves, attempting to provide best solutions based on their experience, or do they draw their knowledge from previous experts?
Well, they probably use both sources of knowledge, just as our own protagonists have. But when it comes to using an expert for our knowledge, the question alway remains, from where did that person gain their knowledge? We see that an issue arises, which is called argumentum ad verecundiam, or appealing to authority, in formal logic, which technically is fallacious, for it doesn't actually provide the reason why a particualr conclusion has been drawn. Rather, using an authority as our witness only says that the witness knows best, without providing why he/she does so. So it is easy to see now that authoiry on its own does not carry the weight of right conclusions that we would like, even if that authority may have good reason to have drawn the conclusions they have.
What then would be the reasons for a right conclusion in this argument? Let's start with a metaphor. A gap in the pavement is a place where their is no concrete. Like our gap in the chart, there is no bar (or part of) indicating the spread of price movement at a particular place. Like the pavement that is missing concrete, so too the the gap in the chart is missing some bar (or part of), or spread of price movement that is graphically represented by the bar.
By definition, a candlestick bar represents the total spread of price range in a specific time period. That spread is from the highest to the lowest prices in the period, and these may or may not be the opening and/or closing prices. If there is no bar (or part of) showing between two consecutive bars, then a gap has formed, just like the place in the pavement where the concrete is missing. So it stands to reason, albeit of the human kind, that a gap is dependent on there being no consecutive price movement within two consecutive time frames (of the same kind), which is graphically displayed on candlestick charts with no bar (or part of) beteween the same two time fames.
It would seem to stand to reason that Hoots explanation, the same as that used by his expert, is more reasonable to what a gap is, because it better describes all the possibilites based on our initial definition of what a bar actually is, that is, the total spread of price range within a specific period.
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