Yes, praise be, yours truly is back from second last in the previous round to top spot with the inspired selection of Toro Energy.

It's easily the race's best stock with the only one coming anywhere near, Poseidon Nickel, being selected by, well, you'll never guess.

Toro, which has state and federal government environmental approvals of its mine and for a processing facility, is a natural winner from the heads of state agreement to export uranium to India.

Poseidon's price started rising the day before it announced it had bought the Lake Johnston mine with reserves of 70,500 tonnes of nickel. Isn't it amazing how the market so accurately anticipated that? Honest, I knew nothing.

Maybe it's just that nickel is the only base metal price that has been rising.

The third best performer, Nanosonics, was chosen by … oh dear, this is getting embarrassing.

The Ben-ites stayed in the black with internet telco My Net Fone. It was also chosen by professional share tipster Richard Hemming but he has two poor performers pulling him down.

Newcomers the Eight Mugs investment club have lived up to their name in not quite the way they intended, landing in eighth spot.

Falling iron ore prices, concerns about the Chinese economy and a drop in the Melbourne Institute/Westpac index of consumer sentiment pulled the market down. The banks were also marked down on a broker's report they would need to build up their capital reserves.

A portfolio starting with $100,000 would on average have shrunk to $98,095 in the past week.

This week's challenges are a Federal Reserve meeting in the US and the minutes of the Reserve Bank's last meeting.

David Potts