The front-month contract for benchmark US light, sweet crudes traded as high as $80/bbl before closing at $79.36/bbl Dec. 31 in what many described as a 78% price jump during 2009 and its biggest surge since 1999 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. But Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix, Zug, Switzerland, charged the alleged 78% gain is "purely a virtual number that will look good only on a misleading investment brochure."Had a leveraged trader bought a NYMEX crude contract at the end of 2008 and rolled his position on "the penultimate day of expiry" at the end of 2009, his earnings would have totaled $19.44/bbl for the year, a 43.6% gain, Jakob said. A trader who rolled hi...