Initial Claims for the week ending Jan. 3rd fell 24,000 to 467,000, from 491,000 last week, and  from a  26-year high of 586,000 the week before.  This decrease came at a -13.5% surprise from the 540,000 estimate.  Initial claims have fallen the last two weeks, which may have been a result of offices closed for holidays allowing less opportunity for initial unemployment claims filings were made.  Also, the figures indicate that those filing haven't regained employment as the number of persons continuing to receive unemployment benefits rose to 4,611,000, the highest since November of 1982 (when size of labor force was smaller), and was only 2,690,000 in the prior year.  In the past week, ending December 27th, initial claims decreased as a result of significantly reduced filings in Texas, California, Florida, and Virginia cited from fewer layoffs in construction, trade, services, automobile, and manufacturing industries.  In Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas,

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Shenandoah Telecommunications Co. (SHEN) is seeing bullish forecasts for the new year. Analyst estimates for 2009 earnings of $1.19 per share were increased by 16% over the past 60 days.

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Shenandoah Telecommunications provides a broad range of telecommunications services through its operating subsidiaries. Its services include local and long distance telephone, Internet and data services, cable television, wireless voice and data services, alarm monitoring, and telecommunications equipment, along with many other associated solutions in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States.

Recent Acquisition

The company recently announced that it completed the acquisition of cable assets and customers in Virginia and West Virginia from Rapid Communications, LLC.

Growth in the Third Quarter

In early November, the Zacks #1 Rank (“strong buy”) company reported third-quarter results, noting that it delivered solid performance despite the economic environment.

Net income from continuing operations totaled $7.4 million, versus the year-prior $6.1 million. Total revenues reached

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Master Limited Partnerships are a useful investment for minimizing your tax bill says Jim Nelson. They are trusts mainly comprised of natural resource, financial services, and real estate assets. Jim picks five small-cap MLPs that should provide steady income without the burden of double taxation.

This from Penny Sleuth:

In the corporate tax world, one dreaded phrase reappears when you talk about dividends: “Double Taxation”. All incorporated companies are taxed on the income they make. The shareholders are taxed again on any dividend distribution they receive from the company. So the same income is taxed twice. But, there is a way around it…

Master Limited Partnerships, or MLPs, are nearly identical to royalty income trusts. The only difference between them is double taxation.

Regular trusts must pay taxes on income before it is distributed to shareholders. Those shareholders also have to pay taxes on the already-taxed income when they receive it. MLPs, on the

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a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_T9VXVyuEITg/SUNq1diWT3I/AAAAAAAAAmk/bSjmELRaRnY/s1600-h/Cigarette.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 231px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_T9VXVyuEITg/SUNq1diWT3I/AAAAAAAAAmk/bSjmELRaRnY/s320/Cigarette.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5279180654902660978" //abr /Now that Barrack Obama is the president-elect, the United Stated will have the first smoking president in many years. Although he has made plans to quit smoking, he admits that he still hasn't yet stopped entirely. Will this have an effect on the consumption of cigarettes and tobacco? If you think so, and you have no objection to investing in cigarette stocks, you may want to consider the tobacco companies, especially because of their extremely high yields.br /br /Vector Group Ltd. (VGR) is a Florida based company that has numerous brands of cigarettes including Liggett, Grand Prix, Eve, Pyramid, USA and nicotine-free Quest. The stock has a PE of 15 a PEG of 1.25, and pays a yield of 11.7%.br /br /Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) makes and markets cigarettes and other ...

AT&T Disconnecting 12,000 Jobs; Credit Suisse Announces 5,300; Capital One Puts Chevy Chase in Its Wallet; Argentina Announces $3.9 Billion Stimulus, Jobless Benefits at 26-year High; Dupont Cuts 2,500 Employees; Williams-Sonoma Beats Estimates; Oil Falls 5%

AT&T Inc. (T) said it would scale back 12,000 jobs, about 4% of its workforce, between now and the end of 2009 to fight “economic pressures, a changing business mix and a more streamlined organizational structure.” It will also take a severance charge of nearly $600 million for the fourth quarter, Reuters reported. Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR: CS) will scale back its workforce, eliminating 5,300 workers, or about 11% of its workforce. Switzerland’s ...

This week is shaping up to be another active one on the bailout-and-financing front. First and foremost, Congress returns to work this week to consider a once-unthinkable proposal: Put up billions in taxpayer-backed loans so that Detroit’s “Big Three” can be saved. Expect a fight, however, as the bailout debate finally moves past banks to focus on General Motors Corp. (GM), Ford Motor Co. (F), and Chrysler Corp.

The situation is dire. GM is burning through cash at a pace that could mean bankruptcy, and all three players are struggling with high costs, weak vehicle sales, frozen credit lines and dwindling cash reserves calling into question whether they can survive much longer without government help. The answer, of course, is that they probably can’t.

But it’s here that the debate turns political, the Detroit Free Press reports. Congressional Democrats are pushing for some form

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The base metals were mixed on Wednesday. Copper traded within a tight 4-cent range through the day, finishing near the lower end at $1.5875/lb., down a penny and a quarter.

Nickel traded choppily, with a bit of an up bias late, to close at $4.6644/lb., up a bit more than a penny. Zinc was down early, but recovered to end at its intraday high of $0.507/lb., up a penny and three-quarters. Aluminum was weak, dropping nearly a penny and a half, to $0.8349/lb., while lead plunged in the afternoon hours after most of the day in the green, settling at $0.5656/lb., down two-thirds of a cent.

Copper was weak on both bad economic numbers out of Europe, and on ballooning stockpiles.

European industrial production declined 2.4% in September, year over year, marking the biggest drop since February 2002, according to the European Union’s statistics office. From August, production sagged by 1.6%. The

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Obama Link FestBarack Obama Hedge Fund Link Fest(http://HedgeFundBlogger.com) I have received many congratulatory emails over the past day from hedge fund/investment professionals in India, Switzerland, London and Singapore all thankful that Obama was elected. I found that interesting in itself and also saw a flood of articles come out discussing Barack Obama and the hedge fund industry, or Obama and the finance/investment industry in general.Yesterday I published this piece: Barack Obama & Hedge Funds... Here are excerpts and links to many of these discussions:(I never discuss my own political views through this site throwing my opinion around regarding hedge funds is enough. I don't support any of these articles one way or another but simply provide them as an aggregation of what has been put out ...

Luna Innovations Incorporated, a Roanoke, Virginia based research, development, and marketer of precision testing, measurement, sensing, and healthcare products, reported positive third quarter financial results yesterday. Quarterly revenue reached $10.7 million. The increase resulted in part from a 20% increase from 2007 in product and license revenue. Gross profit hit $4.3 million for the quarter in comparison to $3.5 million for the same period in 2007, an increase of 21%.

Along with the increase in product and license revenue, the improved results were based on a 3% decrease in operating expenses. These expenses for the third quarter of 2008 were $5.4 million, equal to 50% of total revenue. For the same period last year, operating expenses accounted for 63% of Luna’s total revenue of $5.5 million. Overall, Luna’s net loss decreased from $1.8 million for 2007 to $1.1 million. Taking into account a

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In a sign that the planned construction of new nuclear reactors in the U.S. market could jump-start the nation’s moribund manufacturing sector, France’s Areva SA and defense-industry giant Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) have formed a joint venture to make nuclear reactor vessels, steam generators and other related components at Northrop’s Newport News shipyard in Virginia.

The venture – Areva Newport News LLC – will emanate from a $360 million investment, and will lead to the construction of a 300,000-square-foot production-and-engineering facility, the two companies said yesterday (Thursday). It will employ 500 workers when completed in 2011, according to an MSNMoneycentral report.

Mike Petters, president of Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding, the unit that has signed on to work with Areva, told The Wall Street Journal that “we’ve watched manufacturing wane in shipbuilding and we’ve watched for other opportunities to go into adjacent areas…We think a nuclear renaissance

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