And ... we have another winner!

Today's closing prices for a barrel of oil and an ounce of gold were $79.36 and $1097, respectively, making BN the winner of the seventh "Guess the Price of Oil and Gold" contest by a narrow margin over Scepticus and RP who were in fourth and first place last week.
[Note: The scale in the chart above paints a somewhat misleading picture of the final results below as horizontal displacements in percentage terms are smaller than they appear.]

It was a fairly exciting contest in the final days as BN came out of nowhere, first appearing in the top ten last week in sixth place and then vaulting to the top spot after the oil price continued to rise and the gold price continued to fall. The complete top ten is shown below, KC moving up from fifth to fourth and oilcan dropping from second to fifth.
Yours truly finished a disappointing 28th after making a brief appearance in the top ten a few weeks ago, the first such appearance in a year or so after a string of top ten finishes.

Dan, you finished in a tie for 14th.

For full details about the contest, see this summary post from last month.

Recall that BN will now receive a free one year subscription to Iacono Research where the model portfolio will end the year up somewhere between 15 and 16 percent, better than the average hedge fund in 2009 but well back of the major stock indexes.

Does anyone know anyone who's been fully invested in stocks this year?

Thanks to all who participated - there will be a mid-year contest next year which should kick off sometime in April.

Congratulations BN - please send me mail so I can get an account set up for you.

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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.
For subscription details, click here.