Holding BTC for a long time is a good way to make money if you have many Bitcoins.

If you don't hold a lot of Bitcoin, I think you can make more profit by trading.

That said, being a good trader is not easy and you will have to do research to succeed.

Personally I focus on reading crypto related articles and when I have time, I attend to bitcoin meetups.

Also I recently discovered some free software that predicts the future markets of several coins. www.cryptoforesight.org

If you want big profit you will have to trade because if you only hold it will take sometimes months before you make good profit.

Do your research and never give up trading, in the end you will see the profit coming in