Monday morning headlines

Stocks open lower: Selling settles down after Friday's 205-point loss, but the Dow is still off about 30 points.

Gas update: Prices are finally coming down significantly - an average gallon of regular in the L.A. area is $4.469, according to the Auto Club, down about 18 cents from last week.

Big boost in online shopping: FedEx expects to ship 280 million packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas, up 13 percent from a year earlier. (AP)

Dish to resume carrying AMC: The satellite service settled a four-year breach-of-contract lawsuit with Cablevision Systems that had resulted in dropping shows like "Mad Men." (LAT)

Renter's market: Office vacancy in L.A. County was 18.7 percent in the third quarter, down from 19 percent a year earlier, according to Cushman & Wakefield. From the LAT:

The challenge for many downtown office landlords is that their gleaming high-rises were created to please the tastes of conservative white-collar corporations. The companies most in need of more space, however, are made up of creative types who find such office buildings too square to bear. Many traditional companies such as law and accounting firms, meanwhile, are shrinking their offices. As their leases expire, they reduce their footprints. In some cases, the companies have fewer workers than they did five years ago. In other cases, they are putting more workers in less space by using open "collaborative" floor plans that are now in vogue.

Short sales getting a bit easier: Fewer realtors say that closing a short sale is difficult compared with 2011 and 2010, according to a survey by the California Association of Realtors. (OC Register)

Box office recap: "Paranormal Activity 4" led the way with $30.2 million in its opening weekend. That was followed by "Argo" ($16.6 million) and "Hotel Transylvania" ($13.5 million). (Entertainment Weekly)

News Corp. denies LAT story: The Times reported that the Rupert Murdoch-controlled company was in early early negotiations with Tribune's debt holders to acquire the paper, along with the Chicago Tribune. (Bloomberg)