5 Things You Need to Know Before the Stock Market Opens

The U-turn by the House of Representatives to cave on a deal for an extension of payroll tax cuts, a Christmas miracle by all accounts, leads your quick fix of company, market, economic and investing news for Friday, Dec. 23.

Friday's 5 Biggest Stories

So, Mr. Boehner, was all that crap about "kicking the can down the road" on the payroll tax breaks just for show? [Politico]

Happy New Year, Europe! Standard & Poor's will reportedly publish rating reports on 15 eurozone members in January. [Reuters]

Happy Hanukkah, Mr. Bernanke! Bloomberg makes public the daily borrowings of banks from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis. [Bloomberg]

Hedge fund manager Philip Falcone rejects a settlement pitched by the SEC that would have banned him from the securities industry. Grab your popcorn, this is going to get good. [WSJ]

Reports of the euro's death have been greatly exaggerated. [WSJ]

Quote of the Day

""I think our members waged a good fight. We were able to come to an agreement we were able to fix what came out of the Senate," House Speaker John Boehner said of the agreement over a shorter time period for the payroll tax cut extension than he had been pushing for. [KSEE]

Company News

AIG(AIG) CEO Robert Benmosche wants to say on longer than he initially wanted to. It feels like just yesterday he was threatening to quit on a daily basis. [WSJ]

Eastman Kodak(EK) shakes up its management ranks and the stock rallies 20%. [MarketWatch]

Hey Best Buy(BBY). When you're losing ground to Internet sites like Amazon(AMZN), it would be wise to fulfill online orders in time for Christmas. [Minnesota Public Radio]

Markets

Di! d someon e say "Santa Claus Rally"? The 1300 level could serve as the upper limit of the S&P 500 over the next two weeks. [Market Anthropology]

Go figure: All of the austerity measures in Italy have really dented consumer confidence. [Bloomberg]

A fascinating look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average adjusted for inflation. [Crossing Wall Street]

Investment Strategy

Following John Paulson's lead this year would have been disastrous, and that was even before his flagship hedge fund fell another 9% in December. [Reuters]

Coincidentally, Paulson is one of the five most important hedge fund managers to watch in 2012. [MarketWatch]

The importance of the 200-day moving average through the prism of the SPDR Gold Trust(GLD). [Price Action Lab]

Odds and Ends

Barclays tells the Wall Street Journal to move along, there's nothing to see here. [Dealbreaker]

Self-promotion alert: My NFL picks against the spread for Week 16. I'm already down 0-1 after the Colts had a shocking comeback win last night. [TheStreet]

Happy holidays, everyone. Here's Bing Crosby and David Bowie with a Christmas classic. [YouTube]

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