Most Altcoins lose value over time, its just the matter of time.
Keep this in mind when holding Altcoins for medium and long term and choose wisely. Altcoin is not meant to be long term. If it is then its just a reason made up to enter a trade.
Projects or Coins now have a higher daily trading volume and a broader community to back them up in a continuous development.
Ethereum ETH, Monero XMR, FCT Factor, and DASH are the leading Coin with the highest daily volume. You should follow the chart and define which stage you are on and would it be a whale's consolidation phase. At the right time and a good press release on the project, the pump will begin and all you need it waiting for the money to pour in. Remember, the winner is the one has the most cash, not the most Bitcoin.
I think you are confused with the long term holdings. In most of the cases we have to hold our coins for very very long so that we can profit from them. Know that whatever coins you have mentioned in bold font are nothing but the altcoins and at one time they were also having low volume and no value at all. But look at them now, as they got developed further they have gotten the value as well as prices too. So you see holding works all the time. Now if there are many scammer coins then that is our responsibility to overcome these projects and choose wisely.
Holding works 99% if the project itself is good enough. Just look at the current market, if someone is holding coins that were bought at January then obviously they are in the profits now! So it simply works, see!
Of course before we trade or hoding or join in a coin, we need to investigate carefully to avoid fraud.