Yes this year a lot of the altcoins rised up very high. Like Litecoin went from $100 to $300 and it keeps on increasing. That was one of the coin that has surprised me, because it went up quickly.
Ethereum is this year also very good. This means that we need to hold up coins instead selling them too quickly for a low price.
all the altcoins increase because the bitcoin price has increase. litecoin was at 0.018btc and that did not change, this price of $300 is because bitcoin is high. if bitcoin falls to $3000 then all altcoins will fall... I always consider an altcoin increase against bitcoin and not against fiat. Maybe I'm wrong.
The cancellation of segwit2x was the biggest surprise for me, I never imagined that segwit2x would be canceled, since they were so determined to follow with hard forks... the cancellation of segwit2x is a BIG victory for the whole bitcoin community