Our share tips kept their heads above the water in last week's choppy stock-market conditions to show another increase in their total value when we carried out our usual review of progress.

The improvement came despite a widespread sell-off at the start of the week when the FTSE 100 index fell some 2%.

The one exception was the 2011 list which was substantially unchanged after a further rise in the price of Edinburgh's John Menzies was neatly counterbalanced by a slippage in Scottish power giant, SSE.

We were particularly pleased with the performance of the longstanding 2009 portfolio which registered a gain of more than 80% on its initial £6000 notional investments for the first time.

The list of gainers from trading updates included Carr's Milling Industries which confirmed our prediction of bumper results in last week's column and was rewarded with a further 40p rise in the share price to a near record 850p. We made our original notional investment at 427.5p while brokers at Investec now believe their own target price of 920p for the shares could be too conservative and are working on new forecasts.

A batch of other companies is due to produce their own updates over the next three weeks including SSE, Experian, Diploma, Halma and Compass.

We have high hopes that they should all demonstrate that they are continuing to thrive in the tough economic climate.