Think of a slowly advancing steamroller, with pennies scattered before it. You can run around picking up these pennies, for small but consistent gain over a long period of time. Just don't take your eye off the steamroller!
The canonical example in recent times is the XIV blowup of 2018, which inversed VIX (a security tracking market volatility). So if you held XIV you basically bet that large market moves wouldn't happen - you're shorting volatility. Take a look at the graph to see how that ended up; the steamroller caught up to them! https://www.rcmalternatives.com/2018/02/why-did-xiv-implode/
The canonical example in recent times is the XIV blowup of 2018, which inversed VIX (a security tracking market volatility). So if you held XIV you basically bet that large market moves wouldn't happen - you're shorting volatility. Take a look at the graph to see how that ended up; the steamroller caught up to them! https://www.rcmalternatives.com/2018/02/why-did-xiv-implode/