From my experience, it is profitable. I prefer short term than long term though in some instances I am forced to hold when prices don't go my way. My technique is that when the current price of altcoin is below by 10% its average price, I buy and then when prices go back to its average value I sell. I don't mind making many 5% trades per day.
Actually I have a lot of experience in trading. I experience to have a huge profit, but I also experience losses. But the expert says that it was a normal instances for a traders.
I would like to share my great experience in trading, bitcoin prive before are too low , that why I tried to buy a lot of it. Its not my intension to hold it for a long time. But when I saw it that it grows everyday then i persue it till now that I have a great income now.
Loses are just normal things which its really part of learning process and would really experience along the way since theres no perfect trader on this world and we would eventually cant avoid to lose funds since we do know its really a volatile market and no one can really predict on which way to go but somehow our knowledge will really able to cope up with hardship on trading.