Thursday -- Best Buy Is Bludgeoned; Interesting News Coming Out Of Berkshire Hathaway; H-P Doesn't Get It

IPs for the two wells coming off the confidential list today have been posted.

Active rigs:

	1/16/2014	01/16/2013	01/16/2012	01/16/2011	01/16/2010
Active Rigs	187	185	200	163	80

RBN Energy: Part IV -- supply and demand, natural gas.

Jobs report: Bloomberg tells us the number today (down 2,000 to 326,000) tells us the economy is on track, the corner has been turned, we see light at the end of the tunnel, and this is the lowest number in a month. The Los Angeles Times reports:

The number of people filing for first-time unemployment benefits fell to 326,000 from a downwardly revised 328,000 the previous week. The drop was in line with analyst expectations.

The last time the figure was lower was in the week ended Nov. 30, when 305,000 filed for claims at the start of the holiday season, which typically causes volatility in the numbers.

The four-week average of claims, which smooths out the volatility, dropped to 335,000 last week, down 13,500 from the previous week, the Labor Department said. Economists say weekly claims below 350,000 indicate moderate labor-market growth.

Investors like the report so much, the market dropped only modestly.

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The Wall Street Journal

Well, isn't this interesting? Bare-bones health plans survive through quirk in the law. 

The health-care overhaul was supposed to eliminate insurance plans that offer skimpy coverage at cut rates. But a quirk in the law stands to help some companies keep them going for years to come.

AlliedBarton Security Services, a closely held firm that employs more than 63,000 people nationwide, has offered a modestly updated version of its so-called mini-med plan to employees this year and it intends to do so in 2015 as well, even though the cheap coverage fails to meet requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

Lawmaker retirements to hit centrist ranks. 

A parade of retirements from Congress threatens to deplete Capitol Hill's ranks of centrists, graybeards and legislative craftsmen—increasingly rare commodities in a political hothouse more prone to line-drawing than bridge-building in recent years. Many of the House members who are leaving are centrist Republicans, which could leave the GOP caucus more dominated than ever by the party's conservative wing. Democrats, meanwhile,are losing some of the last of their party's conservative "Blue Dog" wing.

JCPenney to close 33 stores, cut 2,000 jobs.  I may do a stand-alone post on this later, if I have time, and if the spirit moves me.

They never learn. H-P jumps back into the smart-phone market.

S&P hit new record yesterday. I completely missed it. When the market pulls back (which it did earlier this month) and the price of oil drops more than a couple of backs, I tend not to watch the market, unless I have a specific reason. So I completely lost sight that the S&P hit a new record yesterday. I immediately to see how the bellwether equity, Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, did. BRK did not participate in the new record, but there are some interesting stories coming out of Berkshire Hathaway. Again, I hope to do a stand-alone post on all of these odds and ends sometime before the weekend ends.

Best Buy is plummeting. Predictable. I follow the demise of big-box stores here.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read here or anything you thought you might have read here.

Okay, all for now. Many, many readers have sent me notes. I hope to reply to all of them eventually. One reader sent an incredibly well-written analysis of a couple of stories reported by The Minneapolis StarTribune. I don't know if he intended to have the note posted. I will post it anonymously but bury it deeply; it will become an important part of the archives.