A University of Limerick student, Mr Paul Weekes, is this week's winner on foot of a gain of 11.902905 per cent, beating Ms Kathy Enderson into second place by a mere 0.000005 of a percentage point. The strategy of backing a single stock again proved to be a winning one.

Mr Weekes invested his portfolio fully in EMC, the US maker of corporate computer storage systems which was the top performer of the week.

Mr Weekes, a 20-year-old business studies student is on placement with Bank of Ireland Group Treasury until September, working in the back office on interest swap confirmations.

In his third year of a four-year course, he intends to go into stock trading when he graduates and, as part of the weekly prize, will have a year's free share dealing to get him into practice.

For the moment he says he is backing breweries, although as a customer rather than as an investor, saying he intends to sink a few with his £1,000 prize money.

Mr Weekes is no stranger to the top rankings, having reached second place in the weekly competition at the end of April with the help of Hibernia.

And as Sharetrack 100 enters its final few weeks, his overall ranking has improved by virtue of a separate portfolio and he is well placed to be a contender for the overall £15,000 prize.

He moved from 37th to seventh on the leader-board this week by backing Powerscreen which was in the top five performers of the week following confirmation that it is to be taken over by the US engineering group, Terex.

Software company EMC proved the top performing stock during the week. Earlier this month it concluded a collaboration deal with KPMG to assess, design and deliver enterprise storage solutions to customers and has received buy recommendations recently from stockbrokers, including the US broker, Bear Stearns & Co. It ranks number six in Business Week's 1999 Info Tech 100 Companies which, incidentally, includes at number one America Online - another of the top performing five stocks this week.

Meanwhile on the overall leader-board, Mr Andrew Nixon, on a different portfolio - Leeds 5 - maintains the top spot but is still battling with Mr Vincent Kennedy and Mr James O'Brien, all of whom have portfolios worth more than £1.6 million.

Contestants can still avail of a consolation prize of a Sharetrack 100 T-shirt if they write in to The Irish Times, 11/15 D'Olier St, Dublin 2, describing their experience of the competition.