By John Collett
It's been a tough week for our tipsters, with all of them slipping in week three of the four-week Shares Race.
The sharemarket fell from about 5900 points to 5800 points over the week, which mostly explains why our tipsters have gone backwards.
The share racers.Credit: Syed.Ghaffari
Fairfax journalist Phil Baker, who shot from third to first place last week, maintains in the lead despite his portfolio value dropping to $99,995 from $102,623 last week.
And the Chartist, Richard Pritchard, has swapped places with Kalkine's Hina Chowdhary to be in second place with his portfolio worth $97,666.
The best-performing stock in the race so far is Pritchard's pick of Mineral Deposits, the mineral sands producer, whose share price has risen from about 45¢ to 55¢ over the past fortnight.
Chowdhary's pick of Magnis Resources, the graphite producer, is the second-best performer so far.
However, Chowdhary also holds Clean TeQ, the worst performer so far, with her original $10,000 worth $7143. Her portfolio, overall, is now worth $97,197.
Clean TeQ is a supplier of metals to the lithium-ion battery market that uses a "highly efficient extraction and purification" method.
The field remains wide open with the portfolio value difference between the second and fifth place less than $700.
Baker remains the favourite to win the race. His pick, Afterpay, which lets retailers offer a buy-now-pay-later service to customers, is his best performer.
The Shares Race is a fantasy shares game. Contestants start with $100,000 across 10 stocks.