If we were really so good at pinpointing cause and effect in the markets, the people doing so would shut up and make money.
It's far easier to find causes than to predict details. For example, you know the numbers on some companies are going to be released at exactly 2:00pm, and then at 2:00pm related stocks move twice as much as they had in the previous week. You can't profit off of "80% chance of moving strongly up or down at this specific time", but you can make highly accurate claims about causes.
You can't profit off of "80% chance of moving strongly up or down at this specific time"
Sure you can, you buy a set of options which pay off if it moves high or low enough. The reason you can't, in practice, profit is that such opportunities will tend to have already been priced into the cost of those options. But not because there's no such thing as a strategy to profit off of volatility!
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It's far easier to find causes than to predict details. For example, you know the numbers on some companies are going to be released at exactly 2:00pm, and then at 2:00pm related stocks move twice as much as they had in the previous week. You can't profit off of "80% chance of moving strongly up or down at this specific time", but you can make highly accurate claims about causes.
Sure you can, you buy a set of options which pay off if it moves high or low enough. The reason you can't, in practice, profit is that such opportunities will tend to have already been priced into the cost of those options. But not because there's no such thing as a strategy to profit off of volatility!