It's just smarter to hold Spot. You don't miss out on any fast market movements, you can still particpate in the network and earn. The industry moves at a rapid pace and being stuck for like 13 weeks is a major hurdle.
Your reward for being stuck is missing out on potentially large sums of money in exchange for being dumped on by everyone else earning/holding more,and the curation earnings (given account size) just don't quite justify missing out.
Think of how many people bagholding here have lost large amounts of money because they were stuck holding Hive Power over the BTC they used to purchase it. You potentially made $1500 on Hive when the BTC you could've switched to would've made $3000, for example.
As you mentioned, for newcomers it's really discouraging having to learn everything, and that's before they realise they have to lock up funds for weeks with no real incentive.
That said, I'm following suite to a degree and powering down a bit more, I have an idea of when I'll sell off my available Hive, but we'll see where that goes.
And the beauty in such an action is that you can just earn it back. :^)