Buy alt coin with bitcoin and both go up 300%, so did I even make any money? Seems that my poor and rich bitcoin holding friends don't seem to even know the answer to this  :/  

Say I used coinbase and transfer BTC to an exchange like bittrex and exchanged BTC for some alt coin lets call it  XYZ.   

If say Bitcoin was at the time (months ago)  $5,000 USD, and then say the value of this alt coin called XYZ was valued at $100 USD  ( via the BTC estimation) 

If we ignore fees... 


XYZ goes up 300%   from $100 to $300  ,  but at the same time period , BTC also went up 300% and goes from $5000 to $15,000  
Exchange XYZ for BTC , 
Send BTC to coinbase  ... send to bank account   ( ignoring fees )  


Ignoring fees,  did I just break even????   serious question as it seems like I did, right?    

Example say monero went up from $30 to $300 ,  and BTC did a 10x increase ... well then on one hand I was about to say I didn't make any money ,... but now that doesn't make any sense    Ugh   Help
Of course you profited, because your market value just increased by 300%.  

In your case:
You had 1BTC (worth $5000) on Monday.
You sell 1 BTC and buy 50 XYZ( 50 * $100 = $5000).
Then comes Tuesday, both XYZ and BTC goes up 300%.
Now your 50 XYZ is worth $15000, you exchange 50 XYZ for 1 BTC.
You see, your total market value increased from $5000 to $15000.