There are only a few days left for readers to enter their year-end guesses for the seventh installment of the semi-annual "Guess the price of oil and gold contest" where the lucky winner will receive a free one-year subscription to the Iacono Research investment website.

Past contests have produced the following results:
Since the guessing began a week ago, that yellow diamond indicating the current price of oil and gold has moved a full $40 to the right.

Though the price moves during the first half of the year were dominated by rising crude oil, so far, the second half of the year is all about the gold price.

Who knows where it'll be in another six weeks.

The last contest was won by ycching at mid-year in a hard fought battle to the end.
In graphic form, you can see that, despite a number of bold calls for gold, there wasn't a whole lot of movement while the contest was underway.

Interestingly, that handful of off-the-chart guesses for gold don't look all that wacky this time around. Apparently, $1,200 an ounce wasn't wacky at all - just premature.
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 December 31st, 2009 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.


There will be one more notice on Thursday before entries close and current subscribers can win a free one-year extension to their existing subscription should their guesses be the closest.

The winner will be announced on December 31st - good luck to all!