After gains of nearly 60 per cent by some competitors last week, this week's Sharetrack 100 leaders recorded much more modest progress - with the winner securing just 7.9 per cent to top the week-two leader board.

Mr Joe Donovan from Cork, a chartered accountant with SmithKline Beecham, won the weekly prize of £1,000 (#1,270) and a year's free trading with Goodbody Stockbrokers for his Alternative 1 portfolio.

A turnaround in the fortunes of Datalex's share price, which posted a 19.5 per cent gain to become the best-performing share of the week, helped to propel the Corkman into the number one spot this week.

"Datalex appeared to be oversold in the weeks leading up to the competition. I was hoping the price would recover in the run-up to the results, which were due out in mid-May. That obviously paid off," said Mr Donovan. "It was up 31 per cent at one stage and although it closed the week around 19 per cent up, I knew I was in with a shout." It is not Mr Donovan's first foray in the world of Sharetrack 100 dealing - nor is it his first time to scoop a prize. As a competitor in last year's competition, he picked up £1,000 as the weekly winner in the second-last week.

The £1,000 he won this year will be used to fund his holidays in June, he said.

In common with a lot of competitors, Mr Donovan has adopted a two-pronged strategy for the competition, with a couple of portfolios tailored towards winning the weekly prize and a couple aiming at the overall prize.

Mr Donovan's Alternative 1 portfolio currently ranks 3,270th overall with a value of 1,238,622. But another of his portfolios, Sing, has moved into third place in the overall rankings with a value of 1,582,326. "For the weekly prize, the key is trading the volatile shares," said Mr Donovan. "The overall prize requires a different strategy. But I think the overall prize will be difficult to win. You're going to have to take risks you wouldn't normally have to take because there's no point in investing in stable shares that are not going to move much in the 10-week period."

Mr Eoin Byrnes currently tops the overall leaderboard after week two. His Eoin Byrnes portfolio had a value of 1,583,117. In second place is Mr Cathal Dalton and his Speed No.3 portfolio, which was valued at 1,582,522 after two weeks of trading.

A big turnaround in the market saw some of last week's top-performing shares turn into this week's biggest losers. Amazon, best share last week, plunged to put in the second-worst performance, while Iona, number three last week, propped up the table this week. Tech stocks put in a mixed performance over the week - Lucent and Yahoo were also in the bottom five, while Baltimore joined Datalex in the top five.

An overall first prize of £15,000 will be awarded to the person whose portfolio has the highest balance at the end of the competition at 5.30 p.m. on Friday, July 6th. All information regarding Sharetrack 100 is available on the ireland.com website.