Oil and gold contest update #5

The switchover from the expiring January futures contract to the February contract in crude oil averted a required change of scale in the chart below, the former ending at $33.87 a barrel and the latter closing the week at a much more respectable $42.36 at the Nymex in this second-to-last update for the "Guess the Year End Price of Oil and Gold" contest.
Gold ended the week at about $837 an ounce after surging earlier in the week and then tumbling over the last two days as the U.S. Dollar rose from the dead, all of this making for very little overall movement since last week's update.

For background information on this contest see:

• October 09 - Guess the year-end price of oil and gold!
• October 23 - Oil and gold contest - the fun begins

That's Dorcas' Daddy to the left of the 12/19 marker in the chart above and atop the table below. When entries for this contest first opened two months ago, oil fetched almost $90 a barrel making the call for $40 oil something of an outlier.

But, that bold call has DD far ahead of his (her?) closest competitor with less than two weeks to go - only a move back to about $46 could spoil things with Bear Tracks taking over the top spot and News not far behind. The top ten is rounded out with some familiar names from the comments section of the blog, yours truly holding down 61st place out of 85.

Oh well...

Remember that the lucky winner - to be announced on or about New Year's Eve - will receive a free one year subscription to Iacono Research where the model portfolio had another good week but will end the year deep in the red, like nearly everything else in 2008.

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