Stocks dipped lower on Thursday; data showed the intial claims for jobless benefits rose from 19,000 to 479,000, which is the highest since April. Economists had expected claims to be lowered by at least 2,000.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average  was down 5% at close after spending much of the trading day deep int the  negative. Investors are bracing themselves for the government’s monthly payroll report, which is due Friday morning.

“Initial claims have basically done nothing over the first half of this year and the July average of 458,000 is consistent with a labor market under a significant amount of stress,” economist Neil Dutta of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch wrote in a report.

All together, 8.56 million people were collecting unemployment benefits in the week ending July 17. That was up from 8.30 million in the prior week. The U.S. unemployment rate leveled off at at 9.5%. at the end of June.

On Friday morning the government will report an updated jobless rate when it releases its monthly employment rate for July.

Fannie Mae (OTC BB: FNMA.OB) reported a net loss in the second quarter of only 1.2 billion, compared to a net loss of 11.5 billion dollars during the previous quarter. This is the mortgage giant’s smallest quarterly loss in three years.

Although the company is making improvements, they still require another 1.5 billion dollars in federal aid. Fannie Mae Chief Executive Mike Williams believes the improvements are from the company’s new conservative approach.

“We are focused on sustainable home ownership, and our higher underwriting and eligibility standards reflect that,” said Williams in a statement. “Across our industry, we are seeing a more realistic approach to housing and lending that bodes well for the future.”

The company so far has received a total of 85 billion dollars in federal aid, and it asked for another 1.5 billion dollars to keep afloat.  Aside from Fannie Mae, the government distributed 61 billion dollars as aid into Freddie Mac to keep them from drowning during the financial meltdown.

Both mortgage companies are controlled by the federal government, which owns or guarantees half of all U.S. mortgages.

Ambac Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE: ABK) had another monster day closing up 14.67% on 19,393,789 shares.   The five day chart on ABK looks very attractive and the price is currently at a resistance level last seen a month ago.

Ambac Financial Group, Inc. does not have significant operations. Previously, the company provided financial guarantee insurance and other credit enhancement products in the U.S. public finance market, the U.S. structured finance and asset-backed market, and the international finance market, and financial and investment products including investment agreements, funding conduits, interest rate, and currency and total return swaps. Ambac Financial Group was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

You may need to hire a broker to perform buying, selling and other transactions for you on your shares on penny stocks.

The most important thing in penny stock marketing is to make sure that you have a sufficient amount of money in your account to meet both the broker’s commission and the share cost. Many well-known online brokers are available at the rate of $0.001 per share, so don’t ever go with the high end brokers as they would eat much of your profits and turn over. Here we will discuss about some of the best online penny stock brokers.

Ameritrade
Ameritrade is my favorite and has been around since the beginning of online trading. Their platform is very user friendly for the novice trader and has plenty of tools for the more advanced trader. Ameritade also integrates into many other 3rd party software for faster trading.

E Trade
E Trade would charge you around $12.99 for both limit and market orders. This includes all the penny stock trading and all OTCBB stocks for $1 or less. You must have at least $1000 in your account to register with E Trade and you may need to pay a 40% quarterly fee for getting their special services. E Trade is best for active traders who do not need much hand holding and who seek cheap online brokers. You can contact E Trade through the phone at 1-800-387-2331. Their website address is www.etrade.com. Read the rest of this entry »