Mr Eoghan Barry says he will probably use the £1,000 winnings to buy some shares in Telecom Eireann. Photograph: Matt Kavanagh
Mr Eoghan Barry becomes the first contestant to win the weekly prize twice. With a portfolio invested fully in Fyffes, he beat second-placed Ms Cathy Henderson by the narrowest of margins - a mere 0.000002 per cent - to claim the cash prize.
Mr Barry and last week's winner, Mr Charles Kingston - whose portfolio consisted solely of IWP - appear to belong to a growing group of contestants which is placing its hope on a single stock. Seven weeks into the competition and 741 portfolios are now down to one company while a further 544 have just two.
Mr Barry, who works in computer software, says he will probably use the £1,000 to buy some shares in Telecom Eireann. He has a number of portfolios in the competition, some single-stock portfolios, others made up of several companies. Of late, he has been leaning toward Irish secondline stocks like Fyffes and IWP because he believes they offer better value.
Interestingly, while some people are betting on a single stock, just two portfolios have gone cash only. However, as in the real world, cash continues to underperform equities with the two portfolios stuck in 969th and 4,602nd position overall.
Meanwhile, the battle for top spot continues apace with some familiar names continuing to slug it out. Mr Andrew Nixon, the Dublin-based stockbroker, has made it back to the top of the pile and continues to feature heavily through the leaderboard along with Dr Edward Staunton from Tipperary, and William Kingston of the Trinity Business School. Between them, the three men are running 20 of the top 50 portfolios.
However, Mr James O'Brien and Mr Stephen Anderson are resolutely hanging on to Top 10 spots and with it all still to play for, new names continue to emerge. Among them this week are Mr Vincent Kennedy, Mr Ronan Hayden and Mr John Dovey.
At the other end of the spectrum, we're still taking polo-shirt mail at the usual address - Sharetrack 100, The Irish Times, 11/15 D'Olier St, Dublin 2 - or for those who prefer the more modern means of communication, at finance@irish-times.ie
This week's free polo-shirts go to Mr John Fitzgibbon in Clonmel and his brother Aonghus who made a recent brief appearance in the Top 50 leaderboard. Aonghus, a student of law and French at UCC, reckons he must be the most "offshore" of all Sharetrack participants as he is spending the current academic year in Strasbourg as an Erasmus student.
He uses the Internet to read The Irish Times and instructs his brother on what transactions he wishes to make. John too is running a portfolio though it's lagging behind his brother's. But for their determination to play, we feel they deserve the shirts.
