If only the rest of the year on Wall Street could be as good as the first week. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are up 4.5 percent since January 1. The S&P 500 index is at the highest level in five years. But this week’s stock action may be a lot more volatile as Wall Street’s attention shifts away from Congress to the fundamentals of corporate profits. The fourth-quarter earnings season begins tomorrow with Alcoa’s earnings. The previous quarter’s results were disappointing for most large corporations and this season is not expected to be much better.

Motorists can expect bad news when the US Energy Department releases its weekly gas price report today. The national average is creeping up after falling to a one-year low in mid-December. Analysts expect the trend to continue in the coming months. Crude oil futures are up about $10 in the past month.

The Hostess bake sale continues. Hostess Brands – the bankrupt maker of Twinkies and Wonderbread – is said to be in talks with two big companies about selling off pieces of the firm. The Wall Street Journal says Grupo Bimbo and Flowers Foods are negotiating to buy assets including the firm’s bread business. Cake brands may be sold off later this year. Hostess announced in November that it was shutting down its business and selling off its brands and bakery plants.

A big break for global banks. International regulators have decided to slow down the phase-in of new rules meant to ensure banks have enough cash on hand to survive a future financial crisis. The liquidity rules requirement will take effect four years later than originally planned. European banking stocks surged this morning. Shares of several big Italian and Spanish banks rose more than 4 percent. Banks had warned the new rules would sharply reduce their profit margins.

Richard Davies Business Correspondent ABC NEWS Radio ABCNews.com twitter.com/daviesabc

Federal regulators spent more than a year and a half looking into whether Google favored its own products in search results. They didn’t come up with much. The Federal Trade Commission has decided not to bring charges. The announcement is a blow to Microsoft and other Google competitors. Google is by far the biggest name in search. The company has argued its search engine benefits users. The commission says Google has voluntarily agreed to license some patents to mobile phone rivals and stop the practice of including snippets from other websites in its search results.  Read our full story.

Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android continue to gain market share in the smart phone market, while other competitors continue to lose ground, according to the latest report by ComScore. Mashable reports: “In the three-month period ending November 2012, Google had a 53.7% share up from 52.6% in August. Apple’s market share rose from 34.3% to 35%, while RIM, Microsoft and Symbian all lost market share, dropping to 7.3%, 3% and 0.5% respectively.”

Many Americans, especially younger workers, are looking for something different in their next job: stability. A new report from the Council on Employee Benefits says priorities are shifting for many job seekers. “We’re looking for places that offer long-term opportunities,” says Meghan Casserly of Forbes Magazine. “It used to be the trend that workers were looking to work for the next big thing – for the Google or some cool place where they could bring their dog to work. And now, more and more, we’re looking for mature, more established companies that we can plan for the long term. People aren’t just happy to have a job anymore.” Compensation is important, Casserly tells ABC News Radio, but younger workers don’t want work to be all consuming. “The issues of balancing work life with our home life have become they’re for everybody. It’s no longer a woman’s issue.”

University professor is the least stressful job you can have, says a career website. CareerCast.com says teaching at the college level combines a median annual salary of more than $62,000 with prestige and a comfortable environment. “Their students are largely those who choose the classes they attend, and thus want to be in class,” the website said. “Unlike elementary and secondary educators, the performance of college professors isn’t evaluated based on standardized tests.” The website says enlisted men and women in the armed forces have the most stressful jobs.

Actor Patrick Dempsey may have scored a win against Starbucks in his bid to buy a small coffee chain in Seattle. The actor, who played Dr. McDreamy in the hit TV series, Grey’s Anatomy, told a KOMO-TV reporter that his investment group appears to have the winning bid for Tully’s Coffee. He noted that a bankruptcy judge will have the final say next week, but tweeted “We got it! Thank you Seattle!” Tully’s Coffee has 47 company-owned locations in Washington and California. Tully’s filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October. After the auction, Starbucks spokesman Zack Hutson confirmed his company participated and “is currently in a back-up position” for some of Tully’s assets.

Richard Davies Business Correspondent ABC NEWS Radio ABCNews.com twitter.com/daviesabc

Al Gore of Current TV. (Image credit: Danny Moloshok/AP Photo)

Hillary Clinton and some other Americans who want a global perspective may be fans of the Qatar-based news service Al Jazeera, but will Americans tune in to its new English channel?

Owned by the government of Qatar but broadcast across 130 countries, the Arab-language news service says it is planning to replace the Current TV cable network it is purchasing with its own English programming.

Current TV, founded by former vice president Al Gore in 2005, is based in San Francisco.  The purchase price has not been disclosed but the New York Times reports people with knowledge of the deal estimate it was worth $500 million. Gore owned 20 percent of Current TV.

Shortly after the announcement, Time Warner Cable said it was dropping Current TV.

Al Jazeera says about 50 percent of traffic to the Al Jazeera English website comes from the U.S. and Canada.

Simon Dumenco, media columnist at Advertising Age, is skeptical whether millions of new American viewers will watch.

“I hate to say it, but I think a good number of Americans, among those that have even heard of Al Jazeera, are suspicious of it by default,” he said. “There’s a certain segment of the population that’s just going to be automatically suspicious of anything that starts with ‘Al,’ like Al Qaeda — or Al Gore, for that matter.”

“The network’s branding, from its name to its calligraphic Arabic logo, isn’t exactly targeted to the American mainstream,” Dumenco said. “As Al Jazeera expands its footprint in the U.S., is it willing to tweak its branding to appeal to the average heartland channel-surfer? That remains to be seen.”

The site certainly has its fans.

Al Jazeera English has previously been awarded the Columbia Journalism Award, a DuPont award, and a George Polk award.

In March 2011, Hillary Clinton voiced criticism of American media outlets and said Al Jazeera was “real news.”

“You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners,” Clinton said.

Wall Street’s first day of trading for 2013 brought the biggest gains in more than a year for the Dow Jones index – up 308 points. Other averages rose after the fiscal cliff deal in Congress. Ten stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. But don’t expect the euphoria to continue. The ratings firm Moody’s says Congress must go beyond its latest deal and come up with a plan to shrink the deficit if it wants to keep the current credit grade.  Moody’s has a negative outlook on the government’s debt. Congress put off tough decisions on spending cuts that would be aimed at reducing sky-high deficits.

The outlook for savers and investors? “I think you should prepare for a lot of volatility in the coming six months,” says Susan Schmidt of Mesirow Financial. Economist Diane Swonk agrees, saying the deal in Congress “was just one small step, one toe in what is going to be very turbulent waters for the next several; months.”

One of the biggest personal finance changes for many Americans over the next year will involve health care.  In 2013 we’ll learn a lot more about how President Obama’s health reform law will effect consumers.  “Most big changes will start to be seen late next year,” Susan Dentzer, editor in chief of the journal Health Affairs, tells ABC News Radio. “In October open enrollment period begins for people who are going to be eligible to buy coverage through new health insurance exchanges.” Health exchanges will cover people who don’t have coverage today. “There could be as many as 30 million Americans covered under these new arrangements,” says Dentzer. “People will be able to sign up at that point for Medicaid as well. The coverage will actually take effect in January of 2014.”

Better latte than never? Starbucks is now selling cheap, reusable plastic cups at all its US stores. Every time you bring a $1 cup back Starbucks baristas will rinse it with boiling water and then give you a ten cent discount on your coffee. The aim is reduce the amount of trash that ends up in landfills. USA Today reports:  ”Thousands of people have signed petitions on Change.org, a website promoting social change, urging companies to promote reusable options and abandon polystyrene foam packaging, which is rarely recycled.”

The Arabic-owned news channel Al-Jazeera is buying Current TV, extending Al Jazeera’s reach beyond a few large US cities to about 40 million homes.  Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar and is one of the world’s largest international news channels. Current cofounders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt say Current was built with goals that are compatible with Al-Jazeera’s, including giving “voice to those who are not typically heard,” providing independent and diverse points of view” and telling “the stories that no one else is telling.”

Richard Davies Business Correspondent ABC NEWS Radio ABCNews.com twitter.com/daviesabc

Your 401(k) plan may be looking better this morning after a solid gain last year. Expect a big stock market bounce after the House passed the Senate’s fiscal cliff agreement. Futures shot up after the drama finally ended late Tuesday. Economists had warned hundreds of billions of dollars in automatic tax hikes and spending cuts could have triggered a US recession this year.

Several leading European averages are up 2 percent today. Australian and Hong Kong stock indexes closed overnight at their highest levels since June 2011. The vote brings tax increases on high earners for the first time in 20 years. Single taxpayers earning more than $400,000 and couples over $450,000 will see their top marginal tax rate go up. The wealthiest Americans will also pay more on capital gains and dividends. The fiscal cliff deal stops income tax hikes for more than 98 percent of taxpayers.

During 2012 major stock averages rose for a fourth year in a row. The widely quoted S&P 500 index closed with an annual gain of 13.4 percent.

Good news for milk drinkers. The fiscal legislation that passed Congress averts the “dairy cliff”– putting off a steep increase in milk prices. The legislation includes a nine month extension for a 2008 farm bill that ran out at the end of December. Without the fix dairy subsidies would have plunged, and milk prices could have doubled.

Avis Budget Group (Nasdaq:CAR) is buying Zipcar (Nasdaq:ZIP) , the world’s leading car sharing network. According to today’s announcement Avis Budget will pay $12.25 per share in cash, a 49 percent premium over Monday’s closing price. The transaction is subject to approval by Zipcar shareholders and is expected to be completed in the spring of 2013. Car sharing has grown to be a nearly $400 million business in the United States and is expanding rapidly in major cities around the world.

Many economists expect the US jobs market to improve this year especially during the summer and fall. But demand for unskilled jobs may continue a long term decline. One reason is the rise of robots: “You can go to many modern factories today and look out on the factory floor and see very few people but the people who are there are performing higher value jobs,” says James Meigs, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics. Warehouse robots can move bar coded packages and have “the ability to sort and discriminate and make decisions on where it needs to go.” Meigs says robots will do a lot more in the future. “Dumping out the French fries filling up the cokes flipping the burgers” at your local McDonald’s could be one of many innovations.

Richard Davies Business Correspondent ABC NEWS Radio ABCNews.com twitter.com/daviesabc

For this story, we looked at the nine biggest share-price losers among U.S.-based companies with market values of at least $2 billion as of Dec. 28, using data from Fidelity.com. These companies had share-price drops of 44 percent to 78 percent.

Groupon Inc  (GRPN) -78 Percent

The daily deals company has been listed for a little more than a year, and it has been a challenge, losing the most value of any company we looked at on a percentage basis. The Securities and Exchange Commission questioned the company’s accounting practices, which led Groupon revise its revenue. The stock for the daily deals site continued to plunge after the company decided to retain its young CEO, Andrew Mason.  The company is working to expand beyond online coupons, which has seen a host of competitors move into the space, stuffing consumer e-mail boxes with offers.

Hillshire Brands Co. (HSH) -70.6 Percent

The food manufacturing company, formerly known as Sara Lee Corp., decided the best way to revive the brand was to rename itself after its slumping nameplate, Hillshire Farms. The company spun-off its coffee and tea business and launched a revamp of the newly named Hillshire Brands. But that largely failed to impress investors. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company’s meat business has seen a decline over the years from “a mix of price increases to cover commodity costs, stale product packaging and a heavy focus on cost-cutting.”  CEO Sean Connolly is attempting a turnaround by focusing on new products, and backing them with more marketing and advertising.

Apollo Group Inc. (APOL) -62 Percent

The Phoenix-based for-profit higher education firm, which runs the University of Phoenix, has been hit hard by slumping enrollment and more regulation, especially in federal student loans that have loaded many students with far more debt than they are able to repay. According to Zacks, an investment research firm,  earnings fell at the company after enrollment at the group’s flagship school dropped. The University of Phoenix announced that it will start more than 100 new partnerships with community colleges in 2013 to boost enrollment.

Alpha Natural Resources (ANR) -52 Percent

The largest coal mining company in North America swallowed a lot of debt after purchasing Massey Energy for $7.1 billion in cash and stock in 2011. Analysts at Morningstar expect the company to be impacted by its “hefty debt load” for years to come.

Best Buy Co. Inc (BBY) -50 Percent

The electronics company has been battered trying to compete in a low profit margin business where consumers are all too happy to “showroom” them by looking the goods over in stores, then buying  cheaper online. Earlier this year, the company announced plans to trim stores and lay off employees and then CEO Brian Dunn stepped down after allegedly having an inappropriate relationship with an employee.  Best Buy founder Richard Schulze has proposed a $24-to-$26 a share takeover, but no offer has materialized.

Marvell Technology Group (MRVL) -48 Percent

This chip maker lost a patent suit brought by Carnegie Mellon University, which won a $1.17 billion award by a federal jury. The jury found that Marvell sold semiconductors using technology developed at the school, but paid no license fees. The patents covered technology that boosts the accuracy with which hard drive circuits read data from magnetic disks. Marvell unsuccessfully claimed that the technology had been in use before the college applied for its patents. An appeal is planned.

Herbalife LTD (HLF) -54 Percent

Multi-level marketer Herbalife has been under attack from investor William Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management LP, who claims the nutritional-supplement maker operates as a “pyramid scheme.” The company says Ackman has made a “malicious attack on Herbalife’s business model based largely on outdated, distorted and inaccurate information.”  Ackman is a well-known short-seller, who makes money by betting a company’s share price will decline. Herbalife has set a meeting for Jan. 10 with investors and analysts where executives will offer a “comprehensive response to investor questions on its business model.”

JC Penney Co. (JCP) -45 Percent

Things couldn’t have been much worse for the department store retailer this year, which grappled with an earnings, sales and share price rout after its move to cut the coupons and sales and offer everyday low prices floundered. It turns out that shoppers like the gimmicks, and store sales swooned. New CEO Ron Johnson  has overhauled merchandise, the appearance of its stores and pricing. The strategy may be working as the shares picked up toward year end and Oppenheimer analysts Brian Nagel and Rupesh Parikh reaffirmed a “Buy” rating on the firm last week, writing that traffic in stores in the weekend before Christmas was strong.

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) -44 percent

CEO Meg Whitman is struggling to turn the company around as PC sales decline and the acquisition of software firm Autonomy caused a write-down of $8.8 billion because of alleged accounting improprieties.  But the company’s woes aside, H-P took in more than $125 billion in the past year, second only to Apple Corp.,  and many analysts believe the sell-off has been overdone.

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

The world’s most valuable company, Apple Inc., gave CEO Tim Cook a 99 percent pay cut in 2012, according to documents filed with US securities regulators.

The CEO who has been at the helm of the Cupertino-based company since founder Steve Jobs died in Oct. 2011, saw his compensation decline because he got no stock award this year. However, he did get a 51 percent increase in salary and bonus.

According to documents filed to the Securities Exchange Commission Thursday, Cook earned a salary of $1.36 million and received a cash bonus of $2.8 million, making his compensation for the year $4.2 million.

Compensation for Cook is down after the CEO was awarded one of the highest compensation packages on record in the prior year.  In 2011, Cook received $376.2 million in stock, which boosted his pay package to $378 million. According to the Associated Press, that stock owned by Cook is now worth $510 million. Under the terms of the stock grant, half the shares will vest in 2016 and the rest in 2021 if he stays with the company.

It’s been a roller coaster ride for Apple and its shares, which hit an all-time high of $705 on Sept. 21 but have since slid to $513. For the year, though, the shares are up 27 percent.

In July, Apple reported lower than expected third quarter revenue of $35 billion, while analysts had expected $37 billion. The company reported higher profit of $8.8 billion for the third quarter, up from $7.3 billion the previous year.

Earlier this year, Cook acknowledged a misstep by the company in its panned Apple Maps, and issued an apology to its customers for the frustrations. In December, Cook told Bloomberg Businessweek about plans to manufacture Mac computers in the United States.

“Next year we are going to bring some production to the U.S. on the Mac. We’ve been working on this for a long time, and we were getting closer to it. It will happen in 2013,” Cook said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.

Despite the move to bring Apple to America, the company has seen its price targets slashed by some analysts who worry that the market for iPhones and iPads is becoming saturated.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “at least five analysts have cut their price targets for Apple since Dec. 16, with some saying Apple’s purchases from suppliers indicate iPhone and iPad sales may not meet projections.”

Patrick Fallon/Bloomberg/Getty Images

For most of 2012 the US economy was about halfway there: halfway between recession and robust growth.

“I’m optimistic that the worst days are behind us,” economist Diane Swonk told ABC News in February. “The problem is I don’t think the best days are ahead of us yet.”

While more vacancies opened up during the year, the US unemployment rate remained stubbornly high – close to 8 percent. Nearly 5 million Americans have been out of work for at least six months, and many of them saw their jobless benefits run out.

In 2012 American motorists paid the highest ever prices for gasoline. “They are getting pretty ridiculous,” said John Jezenski in Los Angeles as he paid over $5 a gallon to fill up. “It seems to be getting higher and higher so it’s pretty crazy.”  Gas prices have fallen well off their highs for the year, to an average of $3.57 this week.

But high demand for gas is good news for the energy industry. The boom in oil and natural gas production brought more jobs to several states, especially North Dakota, which boasts the lowest unemployment rate in the country.

The year’s big comeback stories came for the housing and auto industries. Edmunds.com forecasts an annual 14 percent gain for auto sales compared with 2011.

In September Stan Humphries of the real estate firm Zillow.com told ABC News Radio “the housing market has really turned a corner.” Since then signs of improvement have solidified.

National home prices rose more than 5 percent this year through October. Housing starts and sales are their highest in five years while foreclosures began to drop. The overhang of unsold properties fell dramatically.

The homes and autos revival was largely fueled by very cheap loans. In September, the Federal Reserve announced it would keep interest rates near zero until at least 2015.

“The idea is to quicken the recovery – to help the economy begin to grow quickly enough to generate new jobs and reduce the unemployment rate,” said Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The bottom line for most businesses improved in 2012. That helped the stock market – and 401(k) funds – gain ground. With less than a week to go before year’s end, the Standard & Poor’s 500, used as a benchmark for many mutual funds, rose 12 percent.

“The economy right now is pretty strong,” says Brian Hamilton, CEO of the financial information firm Sageworks, which tracks privately held businesses. “Companies don’t owe as much money, and things are just doing better. Profit per employee, sales per employee – those are strong.”

But Hamilton says the jobs market is not doing as well as it should, and he blames partisan gridlock.

“The political environment in Washington is poisonous.” And that means businesses find it more difficult than normal to plan for the future. “People don’t know what public policy is going to be. They don’t know what tax policy is going to be.”

Other experts agree. “CEO’s that I talk to are sitting on the sidelines on historically the largest piles of cash they’ve ever had, waiting to deploy it,” says equities Managing Director Susan Schmidt at Mesirow Financial in Chicago.

Looking ahead to the new year, the economy may depend on much more than a temporary fix for taxes rates and spending.

“When Washington can come to a compromise or reach an agreement,” says Schmidt, “I think the markets will respond to that very positively… Kicking the can down the road doesn’t help.”

Richard Davies Business Correspondent ABC NEWS Radio ABCNews.com twitter.com

Car sales are revving up. After a surge of 14 percent this year compared to 2011, Edmunds.com forecasts another gain for next year. Total car sales are likely to top 15 million. As with the improving housing market, accelerating car sales are being powered by low interest rates for consumer loans. Ford Motor Co. says today it will expand manufacturing plants in its home state of Michigan. The company plans to spend nearly $800 million and create thousands of jobs by 2015. A Ford vice president says the investments will support its aggressive growth plans.

Toyota has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle a class action lawsuit over unintended acceleration. The long case put a dent in Toyota’s reputation for quality. The Japanese automaker has recalled more than 14 million cars and light trucks worldwide because of acceleration problems as well as brake defects in the Prius. Toyota is not admitting it was to blame for the problems and the lawsuit settlement is still subject to a federal judge’s approval. “Toyota wants to put its ‘unintended acceleration’ recalls behind it once and for all,” says Senior Analyst Jesse Toprak from TrueCar.com “As costly as it might be, this settlement will allow them to remove most of the lingering financial uncertainty.”

More than a third of Americans will return holiday gifts. The FedEx poll also finds clothing is the most frequently returned gift followed by consumer electronics products and toys. If you’re bringing stuff back, here’s the first rule of returns: “It’s important for consumers to remember that not all retailers return policies are the same. They will vary greatly,” says Kathy Grannis of the National Retail Federation. The clock is ticking for store returns. “Some say 30 days and others say 45 days for electronics it’s often times even more strict.” If you have a receipt for the gift that can speed up your return. Also “keep all of the packaging intact,” says Grannis. “It makes the return process much easier especially if you have a lot of shopping left to do that day you don’t want to stand in line for returns.”

“Many consumers are leaving money on the table,” says Trae Bodge of RetailMeNot. Millions of people who receive gift cards never use them. Many only redeem part of what the cards are worth.

Richard Davies Business Correspondent ABC NEWS Radio ABCNews.com twitter.com/daviesabc

Are you heading back to the mall with post-Christmas returns?

The holiday shopping season was disappointing for many retailers, and that could mean deeper than expected discounts at some stores. Retail industry analyst Marshal Cohen says merchants are stuck with inventory they need to clear out. “They’ve got new merchandise coming in right behind it and they recognize that it’s really now about recouping what sales they’ve lost and the lack of excitement. So look for the sales to carry through for most of January but not much further than that.”

A new report from Mastercard Advisors Spending Pulse says holiday sales grew by just 0.7 percent in the eight weeks from the end of October through Christmas, the smallest gain since 2008. Earlier forecasts looked for a 3 or 4 percent gain. Sales declined in much of the Northeast and Mid Atlantic states after devastation from Superstorm Sandy.

Another drag appears to be falling consumer confidence because of expected fiscal cliff tax hikes. A recent University of Michigan index showed confidence at a five-month low. The International Council of Shopping Centers today is expected to issue new forecasts for December and holiday sales.

Today offers another chance for retailers. Last year, analysts say shoppers spent more than $7 billion  on the day after Christmas. The bargains have become a post-holiday tradition as gift returns are made by shoppers still in a spending mode.

Richard Davies Business Correspondent ABC NEWS Radio ABCNews.com twitter.com/daviesabc