A California woman is under arrest as part of a federal crackdown on people working at financial research firms who illegally feed inside information to investors.

Winifred Jiau is scheduled to appear Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco.

Manhattan prosecutors say the 43-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday at her home in Fremont, Calif.

She is charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Authorities say she gave two portfolio managers at separate hedge funds information about upcoming earnings reports for Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and Nvidia Corp.

The government said she was paid more than $200,000 for early information about the two technology companies.

Facebook likes big numbers - it now has more than 500 million users, each one of whom can have as many as 5,000 friends. Yet as a privately held company, its ownership base must remain small, or it will have to disclose publicly its financial results.

A surging shadow market in the privately held shares of Facebook is making such restraint difficult and could spur the company to go public - even as its executives try to tamp down speculation about an initial public offering - much as similar pressure helped push Microsoft and Google toward their own initial public offerings.

The frenzied trading in Facebook, as well as in Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn, has caught the eye of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York Times DealBook first reported on Tuesday that the agency had asked for information about trading in all four companies.

While it is unclear what exactly the S.E.C. is focusing on, legal experts say that one clear area of inquiry relates to a federal law that establishes a limit for private companies of fewer than 500 shareholders. Once a company has 500 shareholders, it must register its private shares with the S.E.C. and publicly disclose its financial results.

Facebook is well aware of this issue. In 2008, the S.E.C. allowed Facebook to issue restricted stock to employees without having to register the securities, a move that would have required the company to publicly disclose financial information.

Alcatel-Lucent SA has agreed to pay more than $137 million to settle charges brought against it by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.

The SEC late Monday accused the Paris-based telecommunications company of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes to foreign government officials to illicitly win business in Latin America and Asia.

Alcatel, a top supplier to U.S. and European phone companies, agreed to pay more than $45 million to settle the SEC's charges. It will pay an additional $92 million to settle criminal charges announced by the Justice Department.

A representative for Alcatel couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The SEC's complaint said Alcatel's bribes went to government officials in Costa Rica, Honduras, Malaysia and Taiwan between December 2001 and June 2006.

The SEC complaint said all of the bribery payments were undocumented or improperly recorded as consulting fees by Alcatel subsidiaries and then consolidated into the company's financial statements. The complaint also says leaders of several Alcatel subsidiaries and geographical regions either knew or were severely reckless in not knowing about the misconduct.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused unknown Martek Bioscience Corp. investors of insider trading ahead of the company's announcement last week of its $1.09 billion sale to Royal DSM NV, according to recent court filings.

On Dec. 21, Netherlands-based Royal DSM said it would pay $31.50 per share for Columbia, Md.-based Martek, marking a 35 percent premium to its stock value on Dec. 20. Martek makes nutritional supplements for infant formula and Royal DSM makes nutritional supplements, vaccine ingredients and industrial chemicals. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.

In a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan on Dec. 22, the SEC said unknown buyers bought 2,615 call option contracts between Dec. 10 and Dec. 15, through a UBS Ltd. account. The options were sold on the same day the buyout deal was publicly announced, putting those buyers in a position to gain $1.2 million in profit.

There was no information made public about the deal prior to the companies' Dec. 21 announcement.

The SEC wants the court to require the buyers to return the profits and pay a fine. On Dec. 23 the court agreed to freeze assets in the UBS account and ordered the buyers to come forward. A hearing date of Jan. 6 was set.

U.S. stocks swayed between slender gains and losses on Tuesday as a round of lackluster economic data weighed on the market, but a weaker dollar boosted energy and materials stocks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 7 points at 11562 in recent trading.

The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.3% to 2660. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index edged down less than one point to 1257.

The day's cluster of weaker-than-expected data included an index of consumer confidence from the Conference Board, a private research group, that fell to 52.5 in December, below the 57.0 reading expected by economists.

While traders were surprised by the report, some said early holiday shopping figures were a better indication that consumer spending is recovering.

"It appears that there's a disconnect between the consumer confidence index and the reality of what's occurring out there," said Joe Heider, principal at Rehmann, citing encouraging recent retail sales figures.

Still, consumer discretionary stocks slid in the data's wake. Toy-maker Hasbro lost 2.1%, while fast-food company Yum Brands fell 1.1% and Limited Brands, operator of Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works, shed 1.2%.

In bleak news for the housing market, the S&P Case-Shiller home-price indexes reported U.S. home prices declined 1.2% in October from September in 10 major metropolitan areas, while the 20-city index fell 1.3%. The 20-city index fell 0.8% from a year earlier, more than the 0.6% decline economists had predicted. Homebuilders slid, including D.R. Horton, off 2.1%, PulteGroup, down 1.9% and Lennar, which fell 0.9%.

In one bright spot, economic activity among manufacturers in the central Atlantic region expanded at a rapid clip this month, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The service sector also showed great improvement.

"The drop in consumer confidence is unexpected and could raise some doubts in the market, but on the other side we're also impressed by the pickup in Richmond index," said Alan Gayle, senior investment strategist at RidgeWorth Investments. "There are clearly a lot of headwinds facing the global recovery but on balance, the U.S. economy should enter 2011 on a fairly good foot."

Trading volume is expected to be light this week and Monday's trading saw the year's lightest volume of any full session. In a week traditionally light due to holiday vacations, the Northeast continued to dig out of a snowstorm that dumped more than 20 inches of snow on New York City. By mid-day on Tuesday, just under 1 billion shares had traded hands in New York Stock Exchange Composite volume. The 2010 average for a full-day sesssion is around 4.8 billion shares.

Metals and mining stocks rebounded after dipping Monday in the wake of China's interest-rate hikes and benefited on Tuesday from a weaker dollar. Titanium Metals gained 2.2%, Newmont Mining climbed 2.7% and United States Steel rose 0.8%.