Guess the mid-year price of oil and gold!

Welcome to the sixth (wow! six already!) semi-annual "Guess the price of oil and gold contest" where readers can compete to win a free one-year subscription to the companion investment website Iacono Research. Past contests have produced the following results:
There has been little movement in either the price of oil or gold since year-end, however, that could surely change in the weeks ahead.

The last contest was won by Dorcus' Daddy who is now enjoying the benefits of the subscription site, perhaps benefiting from some of the recent upward price movements (the model portfolio was up an even 7.0 percent so far in 2009 as of last Friday).

His "deflationary" guesses were closer than any other last time around and it was the bold call for $40 a barrel crude oil that sealed the deal as shown below.
Sadly, after placing in the top ten during the three prior contests, last time around your humble scribe fell to 70th place out of about 90 guesses. Note that if I ever did have the best guesses, I'd get braggin' rights only and the second place finisher would win the grand prize.

This time around the rules are the same as they've always been.

The contest is based on the combined percentage differences between the guessed values and the closing prices on June 30th, 2009 using the near-month (August) Nymex futures contract for WTI crude oil and the COMEX closing 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 May 12th, two weeks from today - there will be two more notices such as this one as reminders and current subscribers can win a free one-year extension to their existing subscription should their guesses come closest.

The winner will be announced on June 30th - good luck to all!

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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.