This post is a guest contribution by Dian Chu*, market analyst, trader and author of the Economic Forecasts and Opinions blog.

While certain signs have pointed to the end of the recession, unemployment remains rampant. With a double-digit unemployment rate, President Obama has been traveling throughout the nation, pushing his job-creation agenda.

Meanwhile, the House overwhelmingly approved extending the filing deadline for unemployment benefits and the COBRA health coverage subsidy through the end of February, and also narrowly passed the $154 billion jobs bill.

Billions would probably go toward highway construction and mass transit. However, the total is considerably less than the $780 billion stimulus bill passed earlier this year, and is not expected to hit the Senate until early next year. But if the legislation is ultimately passed into law, the total spending could amount to almost

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Companies featured in this edition of the newsletter: DKAM, ENZ, FMTI, HYTM, IMUC, IWEB, NXOI, ONBI, PHC, PSID, SRCO

Markets finished this relatively quiet week much where they began, as a lack of significant catalysts left markets trading mostly sideways and led to the major indices closing decidedly mixed following the week’s activities. All told, the Dow ended the week moderately in positive territory, gaining 82 points to close at 10471, up 0.8% on the week and 19.3% on the year. The Nasdaq lost 0.2% on the week, closing at 2190 bringing its YTD gains to 38.9%, while the S&P 500 finished the week flat but still up 22.5% on the year and the Russell 2000 lost 0.4%, stemming its yearly gains to 20.2%.

Despite the slow week, markets opened sharply lower on Tuesday after ratings agency Moody’s indicated that the US and UK would need to take steps towards

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div style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-weight: bold;"Brigham Exploration (NASDAQ:BEXP)/span is getting very positive comments this morning after the co last night issued an operations update and announced that the Strobeck 27-34 #1H well came online with an initial rate of 2,021 boe/d from the Three Forks/Sanish (TFS) zone:br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"- Jefferies /spannotes the first of three wells scheduled for completion this summer achieved a new record for BEXP ... it is also the second highest Three Forks Sanish (TFS) test in N Dakota. The Strobeck 27-34 (63% NRI; Mountrail County) flowed 2,021 boepd during the first 24 hours from the TFS. BEXP's prior record was 1,433 boepd from the Bakken. The highest report TFS test is XTO's (XTO, $35.85, Buy) Boucher 41X-21 well in Williams County at 2,571 boepd.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Demonstrates that longer laterals, more frac stages is working ... /spanthe Strobeck is 3 miles away from BEXP's ...

The first few days of the week have been characterized by a fresh wave of risk aversion as uncertainty over the global economic outlook took its toll on stock markets and investors favored safe-haven assets such as government bonds, the US dollar and Japanese yen. However, yesterday brought some relief for risky assets - now in corrective mode - and it remains to be seen whether the S&P 500 Index will close down for a fourth consecutive week as the US earnings season gets on the way.

The usual debate on the outlook for the economy and financial markets dominated the video channels over the past few days, but interesting snippets on the IMF’s improved forecast for the global economy, the viability of the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP), the US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the prospects for the earnings-reporting season and President Obama’s visit to Russia were also

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With the U.S. stimulus package in place and the politically contentious cap-and-trade program looming, one sector is poised to benefit from both measures. Calling it the “Rodney Dangerfield” of renewable energies, Greg Reid, director of Clean Technology at Wellington West Capital Markets, says geothermal doesn’t get a lot of respect right now—but that’s about to change. In this exclusive interview with The Energy Report, Greg discusses how the political push, and monetary allocation, for clean energy are aligning the political and social stars over geothermal.

The Energy Report: Greg, in one of your articles, you call geothermal the “sleeping giant” of renewable energy. What makes geothermal so interesting to you?

Greg Reid: I think the political and social stars are starting to align here. One of the key things is political will. You now have the governments that are pushing renewable energy. There was a lot of concern that as …

Independent consulting firm Investars found that you would make more money by following Zacks Equity Research than looking at brokerage ratings.

Over a variety of periods, our long-term buy recommendations earned investors more money than those made by the major brokerage firms. Similarly, our sell recommendations helped investors identify which stocks to avoid.

Investars calculated that Zacks Equity Research's buy-recommended stocks rose 23.9% over the past 5 years, nearly 200% better than the Russell 2000.

To put this performance in perspective, let's look at how Investars says other firms performed. Following the buy recommendations from Goldman Sachs, Standard & Poor's, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Piper Jaffray, Raymond James, BMO Capital Markets and Ameriprise would have lost you money. Not a single one of those well-known brokerage firms had a positive return.

At the same time, Zacks Equity Research did a great job of telling you which stocks to avoid, or even

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This post is a guest contribution by Jeffrey Saut, Chief Investment Strategist and Managing Director of Equity Research at Raymond James & Associates.

I believe “income” will be a profitable investment theme for the foreseeable future. Indeed, the baby boomers are retiring; and, the yields afforded them via Treasury securities, money-market funds, and certificates of deposit (CDs) won’t supplement their retirement account incomes enough to support them in the style to which they have become accustomed. Enter stocks, which since 1926 have averaged a total annualized return of 10.4%.

Interestingly, roughly 5% of that return has come from earnings growth, 0.9% has come from price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple expansions – but 4.5% of said return was derived from

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Our researcher, a href=”http://student.dcu.ie/~cullr2/”Ronan Cull/a, has put together this list of stock picks (Irish, UK, Canadian and US) from around the web. Any take your fancy! a href=”http://www.zignals.com”Chart – Save – Alert with Zignals/a for free.br /br /”Changing Value: 9 picks for 2009 = APC, GE, ISRG, WFC, and more” Sheldon Liber (BloggingStocks.com)br / 1. American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) 2. Anadarko Petroleum (APC) 3. Anglo American (AAUK) 4. Annaly Capital Management (NLY) 5. Diageo plc. (DEO) 6. General Electric Company (GE) 7. Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG) 8. Wells Fargo and Company (WFC) 9. EZCorp Inc. (EZPW)br / br /”Brokers Bullish ISEQ after rise” Pat Boyle (Independent.ie)br /Davy:br / 1. CRH 2. Ryanair 3. …

T-3 Energy Services (NASDAQ:TTES) provides essential safety equipment for oil and gas rigs. Though drilling activity has been affected by the fall in commodity prices, Chris Mayer says the stock has been massively oversold. Today it is trading at $19, down from a high of $84 last year. Given its healthy cash flow and strong international growth outlook, Chris says a move back to $60 is on the cards.

This from The Rude Awakening:

The last time I recommended T-3 Energy Services (NASDAQ:TTES) to the subscribers of my investment letter, Capital & Crisis, the stock tripled over the ensuing months. And even after I issued a “Sell” recommendation on the stock, it continued to move higher. But that was WAY back in July…and nothing is like it used to be.

From a high of $84 a share in July of this year, the stock has come all

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Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) in focus today.Let's start with the downgrades:- Deutsche Bank lowers their rating to Sell from Hold, lowering their tgt to $70 from $120. RIM has become more dependent on hardware sales with time. This means that they have to keep running to keep up with changes in consumer tastes and risk missing numbers if their products do not hit. The company stated they expect operating margins to improve as R&D spend decreases, but also seemed to indicate ad spending would continue to grow. The company guided Q3 gross margins to 47% and expect the margins to move into the mid 40s in FY10. This is well below DB's estimate of 50%. RIM pointed to a large number of new product lines for the cut. In part, the firm thinks this is indicative of their struggle with 3G technologies among other issues....