Another oil trader who finished the week strongly was Willie O'Reilly of Today FM.

At 250 per point he was running an even larger position than Dunne. However, O'Reilly's strategy was to bet that the price of oil would fall and at one point he was nursing a 40,000 loss. He heroically flipped his position and bought into the uptrend recouping his losses.

The currency traders also had good week with John O'Shea of GOAL backing the Euro against the Dollar. The quarter point rate rise from the ECB on Thursday did him no harm and by Friday O'Shea was sitting on a 17,000 gain. Tanya Airey of Sunway Travel has fared even better- her Sterling/Yen position made her over 18,000 in less than four days.

"I just reckoned that the Yen had strengthened too much last week based on fairly weak interest rate rumours so Sterling was due a bounce" Tanya commented.

In a tough week for the international equity markets it is no surprise that the equity traders are bringing up the rear in the first few days of the competition. Footballer Niall Quinn and Ken MacDonald of Hooke & MacDonald both took a hit on their Irish share portfolios losing 24,000 and 18,000 respectively. Quinn is no stranger to pressure, however, and his 100 Elan position could do well next week if a key drug review goes favourably.

Gay Mitchell, TD/MEP, also suffered as the international equity markets fell driven by disappointing news from Google. His long positions on the FTSE and S&P indices lost about 2,000 accordingly. Bill Kelly of Kellys Hotel found it difficult to find US equities that could buck the downtrend but his Rio Tinto holding held up and moderated his losses to just under 10,000. Another trader with mixed fortunes was Michael Dwyer of Pigsback. com who looked for opportunity outside his original commodity trading strategy. He may have regretted this by week's end as his equity holdings were down while his Gold position made almost 10,000.

Outlook for This Week The oil traders are in for a volatile week next week as OPEC meet on Tuesday to discuss oil production levels.

Watch out for some strong moves in the price of Brent Crude. We also have an important employment figures announcement from the US next Friday. Such announcements always have the potential to give the currency markets a shock. The equity traders will be hoping for a recovery in prices following a difficult week.

How to Change your Trading Team Readers who wish to switch Celebrity Traders should make their changes by 3pm tomorrow. The new selections of traders will become active on Tuesday morning.

To change your selections log onto www. deltaindex. ie and follow the Celebrity Trading Challenge link.