• Health Showdown: Weekend vote looms
• Quadruple Witching: Futures and options expire
• Car Sales: J.D. Power boosts estimates
• Crude Crunch: Drops below $81 a barrel

The Lowdown

the dow jones industrial average saw an eight-day winning stretch end Friday after a volatile session tied to the quadruple witching hour, when contracts for stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and single stock futures all expired.

The Dow closed down 37 points at 10742. The S&P 500 ebbed 6 to 1160 and the Nasdaq declined 17 to 2374.

Palm (PALM) shares skidded after the company's weaker-than-forecast sales outlook for the fourth quarter. Palm lost $18.5 million in the third quarter. Tim Long, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said customers "have little interest" in Palm's devices and operating system. He also doesn't think Palm will be purchased by a rival anytime soon.

"We think an acquisition is less and less likely as consumers clearly aren't interested in the OS and generally in the handset market, larger vendors tend to wait for smaller vendors to approach zero before they think about acquisition," he said.

Lloyds Banking Group (LYG) shares jumped in London after the partly U.K. government-held lender said it would be profitable in 2010. The U.K. FTSE 100 hit a 21-month intraday high on a firmer day for European stocks.

Oil futures dropped $1.60 to $80.60 a barrel on the rising dollar, while the British pound slumped on jitters on the upcoming election.

Most Asian markets ended higher Friday after Wall Street's modest gains Thursday, with exporters underpinning the Tokyo market on the yen's retreat, while property developers outperformed in China. Japan's Nikkei 225 added 0.8%, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.2% and South Korea's Kospi gained 0.7%.

U.S. stocks finished an uneven Thursday with major indexes split, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 45 points to take a winning run to eight sessions, while the broader S&P 500 finished fractionally lower. A decline in weekly jobless claims and tepid inflation was countered by rumors of another discount rate hike and jitters around Greece.

Corporate News

• Best Buy (BBY) rose as Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to "buy" on valuation grounds and hopes for a stronger 2010.
• Theravance (THRX) fell after the development-stage biotechnology company priced a sale of at least 7.5 million shares at a 4.1% discount to Thursday's close, but remained above the offer price. The company targets pain management, respiratory, urogenital and infectious diseases.

The Economy

• Frantic politicking in the halls of Capitol Hill continued Friday as Democrats tried to wangle enough votes to pass a $940 million healthcare bill in a vote planned for Sunday. President Barack Obama reportedly delayed a trip to Asia to lobby lawmakers and oversee passage of the legislation. STORY
• No major economic indicators were scheduled for release Friday.

Dow Jones Newswires contributed to this report.