The Royal Gazette/Bermuda Stock Exchange Index ended an up and down week up 12.54 points last week to close at 3642.85, just off an all time high of 3,652.74 reached on Tuesday.

Index bellwether Butterfield Bank gained 25 cents to close the week on $43.75 on volume of 25,791 shares

The top performer for the week was Devonshire Industries ? the parent company of Bermuda Paint ? which gained $3 or 27 percent to close at a 52-week high of $14 on volume of 4,400 shares.

BF&M pushed the price of that stock up ten cents to $15.50 ? also a 52-week high ? after trading 4,600 shares. Insurance rival Argus lost 25 cents and ended the week at $26.25 after investors traded 10,034 shares.

The two publicly traded insurers now have similar investor profiles.

BF&M has a P/E ratio of 11.57 compared to Argus? 12.10 while both are trading at 1.5 times their book value.

Argus remains much larger by market capitalisation at $189.6 million compared to BF&M?s $103.9 million and also offers a superior yield of 3.81 percent compared to BF&M?s 3.1 percent.

LOM (Holdings) Ltd. closed unchanged at $2.90 after investors traded 200 shares.

Belco Holdings closed unchanged at $41 after investors traded 1,000 shares.

Total volume for the week was 46,025 shares worth $1.56 million.

The Bermuda Insurance Index, which tracks the performance of publicly traded Bermuda-based insurers, closed up 29.47 points at 1,136.76 on Friday, and was up for the week.

Many local reinsurers and insurers ended the week strongly. In spite of the continuing onslaught of claims as a result of Hurricane Katrina, several firms received improved ratings from investment analysts.

Everest Re?s shares closed at $100.02, up $4.50 or 4.71 percent while Montpelier Re was up $2.17 or 8.79 percent to $26.86.

RenaissanceRe was up $2.05 or 4.68 percent to $45.90 and Platinum gained $1.69 or 5.58 percent to close at $32.

XL Capital jumped $1.60 or more than two percent to close at $70.70, while PartnerRe, which some analysts upgraded last week, rose $1.52 to close at $66.

ACE also gained, rising $1.33 or 2.89 percent to $47.31.