D. Thomas Wins $5,000 in Beat the Street Contest

Note: All winning portfolios and players are subject to verification

.

Wow! What an exciting finish to our first trading week at the Beat the Street contest. It was a very close race, with only $776.12 separating first and second place.

The bears took charge from the ring of the morning bell off the painful

General Electric

(GE) - Get Report

numbers and allowed D. Thomas, under the player name "Rudegal," to catapult into first place.

Thomas vaulted from eighth place yesterday, led by an all-short portfolio returning an amazing 15.8% for the week. The winning picks are

National City

( NCC),

MF Global

( MF),

First Marblehead

,

MCG Capital

(MCGC)

and

Steelcase

(SCS) - Get Report

.

As you get ready for

Week 2

of the game, be sure to review the following articles, which should give you a leg up on the competition:

The weekly Rocket Stocks

portfolio

features stocks that have the potential to move fast to the upside. Keep an eye on these.

Also, be sure to review Friday's

Mad Money Recap

, and

Jim Cramer's

portfolios of the week. Last week, James Altucher shared his insights on

How to Win Beat the Street

, and all competitors should review that. And if you're bearish on the market, check out

How to Beat the Street: Short-Selling

.

If you didn't play in Week 1, one of the features of this contest is that each Tuesday you can make one change to your five stocks.

Keep an eye out for the weekly

Power Stocks

article for ideas on what you should swap in.

And get some ideas on the

Beat The Street forum

: Ask questions, post ideas and share thoughts on stocks with the rest of the community.

This article was written by a staff member of TheStreet.com.