Can’t you construct a bet that a price will either go up or down, but not remain steady? I believe that’s called a long straddle but I’m not super knowledgeable here.
i was taking the practical view that in most cases, the underlying options are reasonably priced and volatility is not highly unusual, so the practical upside is small at best. it's easy for the non-professional investor to lose money on these because you really need some extraodinary non-public information to exploit them.