To trade in ALT coins one needs to make a thorough research about that particular cryptocurrency or currencies. Today all the information is available on the internet and many cryptocurrencies have dedicated websites for people to get information about their coin and the projects they have. Go through their white paper and check all the related information about their blockchain. Even if you are just planning to trade, getting all the related information is important because you would want to put your money on a coin or coins that make you good money.
Yes, all information must be collected completely if someone wants to invest, many sites, the web provide that information for us to learn, so that before we start investing we already have good knowledge and patterns in investing, if we can't collect this, then it's a very big opportunity the investment that we make will be problematic in the future, even to minimize the risk is quite difficult if there is no pattern that we do.