ORCL

Oracle, Discover and Tiffany are all expected to report year-over-year growth for their most recent quarters this week. Meanwhile, many will be looking for an updated snapshot of the housing market, with three sets of real-estate data coming out.

Stocks closed modestly mixed on light volume Friday in the last full trading week of the year, which marked the third week in a row of overall gains. While drugmakers Pfizer and Merck put a damper on the Dow, robust earnings from Oracle and Research In Motion helped lift tech stocks.

Are traders expecting a sell-off in big tech? Short sellers have increased their gambles against big-tech shares in the period that ended Nov. 30, with shares sold sold short in Intel rising 81%.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and sixteen other billionaires have recently signed on to The Giving Pledge, a philanthropic campaign that commits them to give at least half of their fortunes to charity.

HP is close to a deal to buy security software maker ArcSight (ARST). The transaction would be worth about $1.5 billion, or a little more that $43 a share. That's a 24% premium over where ArcSight's shares traded on September 10.

Cisco Systems and Westcon Group North America agreed to pay $48 million to settle charges they paid kickbacks and referral fees to win government business, and then recouped those costs and more by overcharging the government for their services.

Consider: Larry Ellison is 66 and Hurd is 54, plus Hurd has plenty of experience running a tech company much larger than Oracle. So, it seems likely that the Hewlett-Packard castoff -- now an Oracle co-president -- is destined to take over once Ellison decides to move on.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd, who was forced out of the company after sexual harassment charges were brought against him, is said to be in talks to join Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company.

Larry Ellison of Oracle tops The Wall Street Journal's new list of the 25 highest-paid CEOs of the last decade. Ellison's total compensation over the last 10 years, including salary, bonus, stock and stock option grants, was $1.84 billion.

Enterprise software giant Oracle reported a 25% rise in fiscal fourth-quarter earnings, helped by strong sales of new licenses and market share gains at the expense of the company's chief rival SAP.