It wasn't so much the rankings that provided the surprise at the end of this year's Rehab Great Investment Race; after all Oppenheim Investment Managers put in a very good performance in September and the company was in second place at the end of last month.
What caused the stir this time round was the substantial monthly gain and the margin by which the winner won.
At the end of November, the last month of the race, Oppenheim was well ahead of its five rivals, propelled into the lead by a 26.4 per cent gain on the month.
The fund, headed by chief investment officer Joe O'Dwyer, reaped the benefits of some quite frenetic trading - buying nine stocks and selling 11 - adding to its earlier gains and pushing it into overall first place, with a total return over the contest of 81.8 per cent.
This brought the final value of the fund to €181,802 - more than €34,000 ahead of its nearest rival, and the second-highest ever amount raised in the Rehab race series.
"It was an excellent month for us," said O'Dwyer, who attributed the gains to the "raft of opportunities" that prompted the busy trading.
The main contributors to the outstanding performance were old friends of the Oppenheim fund - the semiconductor stocks CSR and Wolfson Microelectronics.
O'Dwyer said the fund bought back into the companies last month and sold them again, netting gains of about 7 per cent each.
The fund also found a new best friend in gold as one of its holdings, Goldcorp, benefited from the decline in the dollar and produced gains of about 8 per cent by the time it was sold.
While the aim of the competition is obviously to make money - the six participants start out with €100,000 and invest the capital as they wish, with any profits at the end of the 12-month period going to charity - each fund manager adopts his or her own strategy.
The rankings - all bar the bottom place, which has been home to Setanta for most of the competition - have changed regularly, with AIB Investment Managers doing a very good job of playing favourite for several months in the middle of the competition. In the latter months Oppenheim and Irish Life Investment Managers started to put pressure on and a spate of very busy trading activity propelled the two funds into the top two slots.
For Seamus Magner, manager of the Irish Life fund - second with an overall return of 47 per cent - November was also a very busy month as he continued the low-risk strategy that paid off well for him throughout the contest - selling a stock as soon as the performance shows any sign of slowing. During the month he bought and sold 20 and 21 stocks respectively.
Despite the frenetic activity, the fund lost 0.3 per cent in November and has its strong performance in October to thank for the second-place ranking.
AIB Investment Managers held steady in third place overall, with a 35.8 per cent gain over the lifetime of the competition, bringing the fund's value to €135,753.
In fourth place, Bank of Ireland Asset Managers not only held on to the ranking but also to the same stock it has held all the way through the competition, Pfizer.
The fund is up 16.7 per cent since the start of the race, giving it a value of €116,678.
Hibernian put in another excellent performance in the final month, but it wasn't enough to alter the overall positions. It held steady in fifth place, up 13.2 per cent at €113,207.
The only fund to actually lose money over the course of the race was Setanta, which failed to lift itself from the doldrums, losing 11.5 per cent over the course of the investment race and ending with a value of €88,509.
Profit from the race, Rehab's fourth, was €182,943.
