Oil and gold contest update #3

Looking at the movement of the yellow diamonds in the chart below, you don't really get a very good feel for how exciting it's been over the last few weeks for oil and gold prices (well, maybe not so exciting for gold, but certainly for oil).
However, looking at the price levels, you get a very good idea of what's been going on.

Today's closes at about $138 for a barrel of oil and $902 for an ounce of gold are far above and below, respectively, the average guesses made back in April of $119 for oil and $997 for gold. It's been an interesting two months since that time.

The current top ten is shown below. Congrats CW and TP - it's too bad there are more than three weeks left to go. You'd almost think that the guy running these contests knows something that the contestants don't - he always seems to be in or near the top ten (but hasn't won yet). Hmmm...
It appears that the final column (square root of the sum of the squares of the percent differences) shows a different leader than the second to last column (simple sum of percent differences). Since the calculation in the final column would knock yours truly down a few notches, we sure won't use that one to determine a winner (unless of course it starts helping me).

[Note: If memory serves, the simple sum of the percent differences is the official calculation - the last column is being provided just to see what it looks like. And, if I win, the second place finisher gets the prize, but I get the braggin' rights.]

Recall that the prize here is a free one-year subscription to the companion investment website Iacono Research , valued at $159, where the model portfolio had another very good week and now sports a gain of over five almost six percent on the year - 10 or 12 percentage points clear of the major U.S. stock market indexes and most international equity indexes.

In case any readers are interested, the $129 per year special rate has been extended until the middle of June in conjunction with the presentation made at the New York Hard Assets Conference last month.

I'm making available again here for the next week - click below for details.

The Return of the $129/year Rate -- Until June 14th Only!

The next contest update will probably be next Friday since the contest only has a few weeks left to run and this is about the time that the weekly updates start. For a complete list of guesses and other details about the contest see here and here.

The excitement is really starting to build...

To learn more about investing in natural resources using commonly traded ETFs, stocks, and mutual funds, see this description at Iacono Research. Or, sign up for a free trial.