Consider this. Almost all the older altcoins (i.e those created before 2014, there are at least 900 of them floating around) are worth less right now, than their worth two years back. This list includes Namecoin, Litecoin, Ripple, Terracoin, and Quark.
Well with ICO you can receive bonus and you can just dump your coin right away if you feels like it is not heading the way you expect. I also find it hard to analyze most of altcoins trends as most are really going down unless there is a pump and sometimes some updates and most of the times not enough to recover the losses especially if you were holding it for such a long time. Except bitcoin though.