The Dow is up by 29 percent for the year on this penultimate day of trading for 2013.  A check on the markets for the year.

It was a big day Friday for the mobile phone carrier Sprint. It’s stock rose 8.3 percent, amid unconfirmed chatter that it might one day merge with T-Mobile. Sprint’s CEO, Dan Hesse doesn’t comment on speculation, but he is willing to talk to us about all the equipment his troops have been ripping out this year — at the cost of some disruption — to provide data-sucking smart phones with more speed.