Alas, the examples of a small percentage of successful traders cannot be an argument that trading is a profitable business. This is rather an exception to the rule. Well, in order not to waste your time trying to become an exception to the rule, I recommend that everyone and everyone not engage in such activities. As a practicing day trader with 4 years of experience, I tell you this.
Hence my viewpoint of it being safer to hold, rather than more profitable. Trading is obviously very lucrative even outside of cryptocurrencies. However, I'd argue that it is even more lucrative with cryptocurrencies because of the frequent swings we have in the price. Its how wall street make their millions, and if your good at anticipating the swings then you can earn a lot of money. For the average user that isn't educated in economies, and cryptocurrency it would be hard, yeah. However, there are plenty of knowledgeable people over at the Wall Observer thread which are constantly making money, because they are good at anticipating it.
I wouldn't say there's only a select few that have been successful. Out of the trades that I've done, I've been successful 100 percent of the time at generating a profit. Although, admittedly that wasn't trading regularly, and was rather investing at a dip, and then waiting for quite a while after that to withdraw, and inject that money elsewhere.
If you purchased 1 Bitcoin at 100 quid, and then waited 10 years for it to be worth 200 quid, you would have earned 100 quid in total. However, if you invested 100 quid at year 1, then in year 2 during a dip you invested another 100, then sold once the economy recovered, and then went on to invest in another dip, and continue that process you're likely to have more than 100 profit if you timed it well. Trading has the potential to be significantly more profitable than just holding, however it's the risk associated with it that is the problem, not its profitability.
I'm kind of pointing out semantics rather than what I would recommend doing. Personally, even though I was lucky during the times I have traded, I would recommend holding over trading any day of the week, simply because I'm not that skilled at predicting the economy, and what is going on that could effect the price. I'm simply trying to point out that frequent trading has the potential to exponentially increase your wealth, but the risks for a average person probably aren't worth it.
Would I recommend trading to a newbie? That would depend on their knowledge of both economies, and Bitcoin. Therefore in the majority of the cases I would probably recommend that they hold Bitcoin until they reached their goal, whether that is cashing out for fiat or to use Bitcoin as a currency. However, I think the better advice would be determine your investment strategy based on your skill set.