Ofcourse the answer to your question is long term you can't take much profit in short term unless you are veterans trader and you started at forex. But not right? so better to go for long term hold some BTC and altcoins just diversify it properly and do your own search before buying any coins.
although long-term investment is the best things that he can do, he can also try for short-term investment but this only for a really potential coin which could increase in the short-term. the short-term investment could help him to make a profit too and if he can analyze the coins and but when the coin is at the lower price, then in short-term, he can sell his coin to make a profit although the profit is not bigger enough depends on the long-term investment. he can expect to see the high pump for the price if he wants to make a bigger profit.
Altcoin tends to follow the price of Bitcoin and make short-term trading very difficult.
this is why we need to analyze and check for each of coins and if we didn't find then we don't have to do day trading and we can use short-term and long-term for makes a profit. this is what I do so far and I think, even I cannot find any coin that might be profitable for daily, I could still do at least a few days to trading and it gives me a good profit.