Although overshadowed by the strong showing by blue-chips, the AIM 100 made a decent fist of recouping the week's losses.
The AIM 100 finished Friday up 23 points at 3,277, slightly more than halving the week's decline to 19 points, or 0.57%.
Aim's big gainers on the week, and today for that matter, were Plexus Holdings PLC (LON:POS) and Quadrise Fuels International PLC (LON:QFI), with the former up more than a third on the week and the later up one-sixth.
Nighthawk Energy (LON:HAWK) added to yesterday's gains, as investors digested the news that it had received approval for its Arikaree water flood enhanced oil recovery project from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
Up from 1.14p to 1.35p yesterday, the shares raced up 88% today to 2.625p.
Receiving a similar boost was Minoan Group plc (LON:MIN), the resort developer, which sad that the presidential decree granting land use approval for its project in Crete had been issued.
Distil PLC (LON:DIS) climbed 0.14p to just under a penny, having placed 62.63mln shares at a penny a throw.
Investment company Onzima Ventures PLC (LON:ONZ) said N4 Pharma, in which it has a 49% stake, has acquired the exclusive global rights to a wide range of novel patents from Opal IP Limited for new uses and formulations of many of the world's leading off patent or soon to come off patent drugs.
At the same time, Opal has entered into a consultancy services agreement with N4 Pharma whereby it will provide patent and formulation support in connection with N4's Cocrys technology.
Onzima's shares closed at 1.05p, up 20%.
Mid-session
Junior oilers were making ground as small cap indices went higher but were still left in the rear view mirror by FTSE100.
FTSE AIM 100 was up 0.64% at the midday point at 3,275, while FTSE AIM All share gained 0.57% to 701.590.
Bigger blue chip brother FTSE100 gained 1.29% to 6,114 with Aviva (LON:AV.) the biggest gainer, up 5.26% to 490.3p, as it continues to bask in the market's reception of its full year 2015 numbers.
The big faller on Footsie was Marks & Spencer (LON:MKS), which shed 2.8% at 395.3p.
Brent crude futures at the time of writing were up 1.4% at US$40.65 a barrel for May delivery and WTI was also higher. Juniors Edge Resources (LON:EDG), up 28.57% to 0.23p; Petrel (LON:PET), up 22.73% to 3.38p and Prospex Oil (LON:PXOG) ,up 48% to 2p were all higher.
Miners were also among gainers with Tertiary Minerals (LON:TYM) up 20% to 1.62p and SolGold (LON:SOLG) over 18% ahead at 3.38p.
Among the big losers was stamps and collectibles firm Stanley Gibbons (LON:SGI), down 39.6% to 22.5p, as it confirmed that it's very close to concluding the terms of an equity fundraising of around £13 million by the issue of new ordinary shares at a price of 10p.
Also on the up was internet domain name management company Minds + Machines Group Ltd (LON:MMX) after it entered into a co-marketing agreement with the controller of the .club and .bar top level domains to co-promote Minds + Machines group's .beer and .vodka domains to the US nightclub and bar industry via North America's second largest registrar group through Name.com. Shared added 3.9% to 10p a pop.
Drug developer Scancell Holdings PLC (LON:SCLP) advanced 7.8% to 19p as it said it is teaming up with Sweden’s leading research organisation. The collaboration could aid the development of one of Scancell's two breakthrough technologies.
W Resources (LON:WRES) added 4.26% to 0.49p as the tungsten, gold and copper junior raised £750,000 through a share placing backed by its directors.
W Resources is developing the La Parrilla project in Spain, where tungsten production at a "fast-track mine" is scheduled for late 2016 at an estimated cost of US$16mln.