What I mean by straight HODL is that your hold through the crashes and the rises until you inevitably cash our and by trading I mean that you hold for a few months and then sell into fiat and wait for the expected dip/recession.
What i've noticed over the past years is that if I was less greedy and just cashed out after a reasonable profit and then held until the inevitable crashed, I would have made much more money than if i just held or bought another coin. 

An example of this is when I bought eth at 475 and sold at 1380.  Right after I sold I bought ltc at 230 thinking that it was gonna skyrocket after some of the money from the eth will flow back into the other coins.  The problem with that was that the entire market crashed and so if I were to just hold my fiat i would have been able to easily double my money. 

Let me know what your guys's thoughts are on this.