As a long term holder I would not panic, since the build up to bitcoin cash the alt market took a hit but there are many examples of successful alts since, the same thing is happening now with bitcoin gold coming, you also have large incentive to convert alt coins back to bitcoin with the free drops that come with the fork, people then cash out the free coins driving the price back down, once this happens the big gig is over and people go back to altcoins for larger returns.
A few thing that can cause alt drops..
- A huge bitcoin pump, people cash out to fiat and buy bitcoin back low, you drop altcoins to do this.
- Bitcoin crashes after a stable period and people panic about the overall market, they've all been wrong to date.
- Any big news which causes fear, chinese ico news for example or big name investors making comments.
- More factors ofcourse but you can see these above ones in recent times, fear seems to be one of the big drivers.
What we see coming next year looks to be stability after the forks, general good news for crypto in 2018 and overall things will only go up.
If you can sell/buy the high low points along the way you can profit but key is to not be fearful of small market change.
You also have to look at the price of some alts, they are still very high compared to 8-12 months ago, digibyte was as low as 20 sats earlier in the year and as high as 2000, that is not sustainable, recent times have put it around 200 sats, this is still 10 fold after a massive crash, people do not make that level of profit in such a short time and not pull out, look for slower growing coins for stability.
Hold your coins or profit from the waves, don't panic out, 2018 will only be bigger and the market isn't getting smaller.
My 2c
