Basic Points

• A right tail is a reference to the far right side of the bell curve. It shows how likely it is to make a large profit and how strong that could be. 
• Most commonly, left tails are interpreted as risk (potential losses) and right tails are interpreted as profit opportunities (potential gains). 
• However, in the sense of FOMO (fear of missing out), right tail becomes left tail in the form of missed opportunity. 

Advanced: Strategy

Strategically, we can capture unlimited right tail opportunity by going long single-leg calls during a rally, or long call backspreads (long more options than short). But often we can bring in the best averages by shorting those tails as wingtips. This way, it is like harvesting raffle tickets and then selling back some lottery tickets. This is incomparably safer than writing lottery tickets out of context (naked) as long as the debit is at least as strong as the credit.

Another factor of right tails is that they are not bound to bullish action. The right tail of a portfolio is simply whatever delivers strong returns on the high end. And so bearish positions during a crash also have right-tail opportunity.