I think you are missing out the best part of the coins are representing. Sure you can get a surge from buying or influx of volume to make it more attractive for newcomers to invest and those elevating the price. But the ultimate value builder is the project itself not the speculation of its assets. This is the best way of investing long term and no speculation can affect it if the team of the project guard from it.
The thing you can do is follow projects and test their execution, for example, I have been following a project called Lympo and not only they did everything they say they will, but there is something big coming up. There was a leak like here:
http://boards.4channel.org/biz/thread/15515880And there are some serious rumors that something big is coming
If you have any more excellent projects to chare please feel free to message me at any time