That's a nice sentiment, but I think you might actually be wrong on this one. Hodling is good for stability, but if you hodling is still guessing the long-term tend. If you are certain that a certain coin if going up long-term, than you can certainly make some money along the way and it's going to be more than if you just buy and hodl.
Of course, while this is theoretically and technically the case, I really like the question you suggest we should be asking ourselves despite the fact that it applies only to steem. Steem allows us earn not by trading, but by being a valuable member of a community. But this does not apply to many of the other coins where all you can really do is trade or invest long term and hodl.
Hmmm but what if you sell right before a big jump?
Let's say I love LTC. I sell off a bunch of LTC at the then-high price $100 to buy up some altcoins based on some market analysis . Then I wake up the next day and LTC is at the insane new All Time High of $250. That would suck!
Risking things like that has always stopped me from pursuing a "buy at the peak and sell at the low every few days" kind of strategy, as easy as it looks. One big loss can completely undo all of the small wins. I could be wrong though - just my $0.02
Oh, I'm definitely not a trader, I'm just saying that if a coin is gradually going up and you are right in that prediction, daily trading could earn you more than simply hodling. Having said that, I'm actually hodling all my steem and I haven't yet sold any SBDs or Steem for bitcoin or anything else. I see a lot of value in this platform and I'm here for the platform and the opportunities it presents, not for the speculation.
Speculation is always risky and hodling could lead to losses if a coin crashing (which doesn't seem to happen that often right now, but is not something impossible and wouldn't be something unexpected if it happens to some).
Gotcha. We're on the same page here, 100% agree