After three weeks, the overall leaderboard is finally revealing some consistent portfolio results. Leading the pack is the Horse portfolio, managed by Mr Joe Twomey and Mr Colm Martin, with a value of £1,559,118.50. This performer jumped six places from number seven last week, where it was tied with Gooseberry, another Twomey/Martin managed affair.

One of the investment duo's Sharetrack 100 portfolios finished 16th last year overall, while another grabbed a weekly prize.

The unusual names chosen for their 17 combined portfolios are derived from the alphabet - A for Apple, B for Beet, etc.

Horse's core holdings are BT and Oracle. Oracle is up nearly 50 per cent from registration and has greatly enhanced the portfolio, says Mr Twomey. They recently cashed in Iona Technologies, which has peaked in their opinion, and purchased Reuters.

The two plan to actively use their one weekly transaction per portfolio for the duration of the competition.

Both men are employed by the Revenue Commissioners and are keen stockmarket watchers. They joined a share club called Na Fir Bolg last November and by the beginning of March it was up 76 per cent, says Mr Twomey.

Horse's closest competitor by just under £35,000 is Mr William Dowling's Team 17033 which is down from the winning spot a week ago. Of course, Limerickman and a week-one winner Mr Val McDermott is not to be underestimated as two of his portfolios Dilger's Advice and Team 14621 hold third and fourth place. Four more of his 30 portfolios are also on the leaderboard - Team 20523, Evans Team, Ervale and Marks Team.

Mr Seamus Lennon and Mr Conor Brangan may also be ones to watch as they have multiple entries in the top 50.

This week clearly favours Mr Paul Muldoon, a final year business studies student at Dundalk Institute of Technology, who has four portfolios in the top five. In the first weeks of the competition, three of the Ardee, Co Louth native's portfolios made a showing in the top 10.

Mr Muldoon says his strategy is technology-based as he felt this presented the most potential for growth. In hindsight, he wishes he had used bank stocks as the core holdings in some of his portfolios rather than Iona and Baltimore which have suffered significant losses. For the moment, he is maintaining the current positions in all his portfolios.

Mr David O'Donovan from Dartry in Dublin had a stellar gain of more than 12 per cent this week with his Saturn portfolio. He wins the weekly £1,000.