Beat the Street Action: The Cash Prizes Keep Coming

You don't need to know much to play Beat the Street, but it doesn't hurt to study up before next week's round if you want a serious shot at winning $5,000 cash. And right now there is one happy competitor who could teach all traders a thing or two.

Beat the Street’s leader, HappyAss, extended his first place position in The Street.com's stock picking contest on April 30.

HappyAss who has chosen to load his portfolio with long airlines and currently stands at $297,552. Keeping with the aviation theme, he also added another airline, Continental (CAL) to his portfolio during Wednesday's change.

In second place is HenryH at $295,975. HenryH is also heavy on airlines but holds also China Finance Online (JRJC) and is short Giant Interactive (GA). That is one of only two shorts among the portfolios of the top five players.

In third place was KMR33KMR, with $293,647. In fourth was Bklnman with $293,439, and StreetTrader rounded out the top five with $292,802.

Registered players can go to the Beat the Street web site and see what stocks the other players have chosen. Players can also keep abreast of the game in the Stockpickr forum.

The next Beat the Street game will be held next week, so if you missed this week, you're only a few days away from your next chance to play. As the final day of trading nears for Week 4 of the game, we wanted to share some of the game's trends.

This week saw 5,568 contestants, and they were a decidedly bullish group in making their total 29,642 stock picks, as 23,444 buys were made, vs. 6,198 short sales.