Shares of Heartland Oil & Gas exploded in value this morning after the company released some promising news regarding its latest project. The price of company stock hit $0.021 (up from $0.015) on more than 75 million shares traded, marking its highest point since the second week of May.

Investors are running for the hills today, but are they running in the right direction? In this very informative webcast, Marc Faber and Frank Holmes discuss global investment opportunities and threats.

Enjoy the discussion.

I hate to perpetuate the media hype, but it is what is driving the markets right now. In early morning trading we have already seen oil prices surg past $143 a barrel for the first time ever, and the price for a gallon of gas hit an all-time high in the United States.

Renewed fears of inflation and slower growth caused by record energy costs played havoc with global stock markets last week, resulting in the Dow Jones Industrial Average being on track to record its worst June since the Great Depression. As stocks suffered, gold bullion surged and government bond yields dropped due to safe-haven buying.

The clamor over whether “speculators” are driving oil’s parabolic run-up has become almost deafening, with the number of Congressional hearings on the subject reaching 40 this week and the price of oil dominating the nightly news.

The Chinese economy is different to ours — and an increase in price could actually BOOST oil consumption.

Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City share index continues to be a leader this year. Once it led on the way up, this year it’s been leading global markets on the charge down. The index fell on every trading day in May and in early June as well. It’s now down by 60 per cent since the beginning of the year.

A ton of doubt ...

Sentiment deteriorated further during the past week as oil prices rebounded, more bad news in the financial sector surfaced, economic woes mounted and inflationary pressures intensified, compounding already-jittery investors’ anxiety.

Since opening this Monday, the bulls have taken flight at Dow Jones and the index is descending steadily towards March lows of 11850. As I mentioned before, if investors can or are willing to hold the fort here, we can look forward to a sustained upswing for the next week or so, barring unforeseen disasters.

The Russian economy grew 8.5% in Q1, as the commodities boom continued to spur growth. Russia is the world’s top natural gas exporter and number two oil exporter.

Sun Cal Energy Inc., an exploration stage oil and gas company, works to find and extract oil and gas from new and existing oil and gas deposits. The company continues in its exploration stage with partial and 100% interests in several leases.

With oil on the rise, could Haliburton still be in play. It seems to be in stuck in groove.

Central bankers’ inflation-fighting rhetoric moved to centre stage over the past week. A succession of hawkish comments from US policymakers persuaded pundits that the US rate-cutting cycle was over, resulting in a stronger US dollar, plummeting government bonds, predominantly lower global stock markets (with Asia seeing the most red), and non-agricultural commodities coming off the boil.

As the big dominos of $125 oil, $4 copper, $6 corn, and $1,000 gold fall onto the market, raw-material producers enjoy record cash flows. The next domino is all the cash finding its way to companies that supply equipment, services, and infrastructure to those producers.

"It is getting much more expensive to find Oil these days."

While it is true that it is getting more expensive to find oil, one has to examine whether that increase is of a permanent nature as many argue.