Oil and gold contest - only one week left!

Just one week remains before entries close for the latest installment of the popular semi-annual contest "Guess the year-end price of oil and gold". Already, there have been important price moves from last week when this contest was first announced.
Recall that the last contest concluded on June 30th and was won by TP after prices just sort of hovered around $130 for a barrel of oil and $900 for an ounce of gold. As always, the winner receives a free one-year subscription to the companion investment website Iacono Research.

The top ten finishers from last time are shown below. Yours truly moved from 10th all the way up to 4th and has now been in the top ten in three out of the four contests. I get to guess last, so don't hold out with your picks waiting to see what I do.

[Note: If I do win - which may just happen someday - it will result in bragging rights only and the second place finisher will receive the first place prize.]

The results of the last contest are shown in graphical form below.
It wasn't real exciting last time around, but the year-end contests have always been much more eventful than the mid-year contests.

After entries close one week from today, a new chart like the one above will be populated with all the guesses that have been received and it will be updated every other Friday until the last few weeks of the year when the tension will really mount and weekly updates will be provided!

No, the tension doesn't really mount.

Well, maybe a little.

The contest is based on the combined percentage differences between the guessed values and the closing prices on December 31st, 2008 using the near-month (February) Nymex futures contract for WTI crude oil and the COMEX closing bid price for gold bullion.

Entries may be made either by posting them in the comments section of this post or sending mail to either tim-at-iaconoresearch.com or tliacono-at-yahoo.com. All entries must be received no later than October 23rd, one week from today - there will be at least one more notice such as this one as a reminder and current subscribers to the investment site can win a free one-year extension to their existing subscription.

The winner will be announced on New Years Eve - good luck to all!