Regarding the April rumors its a past trend, if you look back at the last few years BTC has always been bearish around Feb-March.
I think once we get to Easter time it will start to grow (Hopefully)

Alts are all bleeding as many are taking profits and moving into BTC and also lots of ICOS have been released in the last month alone.

Buy the dips and HODL is my best advice :-)

Regarding have additional fiat for dips the best thing to do is have several different incomes coming in (Ideal world I know)

Currently I have minning which ticks along nicely and other bits and then invest as much as possible on the dips, although the dip has pretty much been 2018 so far in my opinion.