Our share tips recovered their poise after the recent stock-market shake-out to advance across a broad front last week with three of the four portfolios recording overall gains when we conducted our review of progress on Wednesday morning.

The flagship 2009 portfolio was again to the fore, adding 1.6% to its total value after particularly strong showings by Diageo and industrial components group Diploma.

It is now sporting a 93.8% gain on its initial £6000 investments and we retain, admittedly, slight hopes that it could still achieve its target of doubling in value in time for Christmas.

Scottish soft drinks group AG Barr stood out in the 2010 portfolio with the shares up 25p to a peak 473.1p after Barclays Capital rushed out a buy note to accompany news that the Irn-Bru firm has won a sponsorship deal for the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.

Its performance helped the portfolio to record an overall gain of 1.7% despite a surprising slippage in the price of Carr's Milling Industries after a strong set of results. We believe that the company is poised to reach new heights after current profit-taking dies down and have added the shares to our 2012 list in anticipation of gains to come from fresh investments in its foods business at the reopened port at Kirkcaldy and in its robotics engineering division.

We have set our usual stop/loss level at which we will dispose of the investment on any sustained reversal.

We have also set new, higher, selling prices for Diageo, Travis Perkins and Standard Life which all moved to new highs on good buying support last week.

The 2012 selections lagged behind with a gain of just 0.4% over the week while the 2011 portfolio was substantially unchanged with a slippage in the price of Tesco shares cancelling out gains elsewhere.