I've also been starting daytrading just some weeks ago. So far i learned to stick to reputable Coins - buy in dip and sell in pump.
Long-term only for "sleepers" as they were called in a post above (i.e. Ubiq, Waves)
And in fact i always find it a little weird that people say hold altcoins for long term to make profit! in my opinion the profit is always in short term trading of altcoins not in the long term.
Disagree...the big money is in sleepers that at some point perform x20...To perform the same at short you must de 100% 20 times...The deal here is, not everybody is made to wait for MONTHS.
Best bet in my opinion is take the short profits to buy sleepers you trust.
Let me Show you something..
If you start with (lets say) 1 BTC and add 5% Profit every here and there (i experienced it this way) - you double very soon.
1.05
1.1
1.15
1.21
1.27
1.34
1.4
1.47
1.55 <- +55% after 9 trades
1.62
1.71
1.79
1.88
1.97 <- almost doubled after 14 trades
Of course, this is just an example
Nice example! That's my reasoning also. The only difference is in the real world you will take some losses on some coins that will fail to perform unless you are willing to wait a very long time for them to rebound.
That`s why i recommend to stick with coins that were in a stable uptrend the last months.
i.e. BTC, ETH, LTC, DASH ... one might say every coin that has a Tether pair on bittrex