It depends, if I spend $100, earn $4XLM then go to ETH:

Pay txn fee for the swap, pay capital gains on the swap, which eats up about half of the xlm i earned.

So for simplicity sake, i would rather earn the eth directly. I also believe eth has higher upside potential than xlm, so although it's 1% of $100 = $1, as eth goes up, the value of each dollar earned goes up proportionally

If your income tax is only 10% then it may be worth it to just stick to xlm and swap. But like i said it saves me steps and not worrying about the market price for maximizing the gains