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Becky Smith was the January winner in Stockpickr's Wall Street Pros vs. Main Street Joes stock game. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views of TheStreet or its management.

Can we decrease portfolio volatility and increase returns by rotating a small percentage in and out of leveraged ETFs? And all it took him to rake in that cash was time. NEW YORK Stockpickr -- My name is Becky Smith, I am a housewife, and I trade stocks. I did not go to college and have never studied finance or economics.

I became interested in stock trading about 11 years ago. The first six to seven years were a little rough, but I've learned from my experiences.

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I have learned that to be a stock trader, you need to have a good understanding of the markets, their trends and how the markets and individual stocks react to news. It takes confidence in your research. You need to have the time to follow the financial news and your stock trades. I enjoy playing online contests and the competition it provides.

Before , I had never shorted a stock. I practiced my shorting strategies in a previous eight-week contest called Beat the Street, sponsored by TheStreet in Take profits when you have them.

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I start my day out by tuning into CNBC. I want to know what news is affecting the markets and what economic reports are being released and when. I watch the premarket trading, looking for low-priced stocks that are making a large-percentage move to the upside, looking for something to short. When I find something premarket, I can take some time to read the news that has caused the price increase and decide if I believe the jump in price is justified.

If I'm interested, some of the things that I check after I've read the news are the outstanding share count, the float, the average volume of shares traded in a day and the percentage of shares that have been shorted.

The smaller the float, the more unpredictably the stock will trade, and I tend to avoid stocks with very low floats. If there is a high percentage of shorts once the price starts falling, it will not stay down long because shorts will start covering and drive the price back up.

For earnings, I tend to go with stocks that have had a history of beating and exceeding earnings expectations. Very often when one of the CNBC anchors announces that coming up they will be discussing a certain stock or talking to the CEO of a certain company, if it's something positive, the stock price moves up during the clip.

I've made money by taking a short position as they are talking and covering a couple of minutes after the clip is done. In the month of January, I played sectors, three to five stocks at a time, going long on some earnings plays and short some commodities.

The shortage of rare earth elements had been in the news for weeks. I made a lot of money shorting those stocks.

I went long Potash POT and various other agricultural stocks going into POT's earnings on Jan. I bought 1, shares about 10 minutes before the close. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. There is always over-exuberance in the market, to the upside and to the downside. The price of the stock will always correct. Plan your strategy, make your trade -- and however you trade, long or short, may all of your trades be profitable!

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