Are we speaking about the pre-ICO phase? If that's the case then you can't really tell If the coin will be profitable but you will definitely know If the project is something serious and not a simple shitcoin made by scammers. You should always take a look at the team members, escrow, read the whitepaper and have an idea how things are going to work, how the coin is distributed among developers, community managers, investors etc.
If the coin is launched already (say you are a few months/1 year late) then you should check the previous achievements and roadmap and how active the development is. See MaidSafe for example, even though they didn't deliver the project yet, we see weekly development changes and the coin is on the top 10 because everyone knows that this team will eventually deliver and everything is on progress (Beta, alpha, Final release).
Well said. If you are new on trying a coin you must always checked thing all about the project of the coin. Make sure to checked all the aspect of the project like the people who is supporting it. The community, manager and the people who take time to invest on the specific project. But if the coin has record you can easily determine its future on the market stock and the ratings of the coin users. And always remember that in all coin there is always a risk it just depend on how we are going to support the coin and also the developers idea to build it for more improvement and development for it to become profitable.
