I guess it is pretty much the same, well it depends on where you are good at, bitcoin is mining is also a safe way where you could earn a lot of bitcoin if you have a very nice mining rig, but if you are just going to do this Cloud Mining then I could agree to you that it is too risky. Trading is not that bad also, but it is good in the long run, you need to wait for the price of the Altcoins that you are holding to increase before you could sell it to have the profits.
In both ways, I'd prefer to do both if I were you, well of course you are going to need a bigger capital here, but trust me, the return will be something you can't ever imagine.