The Market In 5 Minutes: Thumbs Up

Below is a tool used by the Benzinga News Desk each trading day -- it's a look at everything happening in the market, in five minutes. Apply for daily AM access by clicking here or email minutes@benzinga.com.

Macro Focus

The Bank of Japan surprised many investors by standing pat and left its deposit rate at -0.1 percent unchanged. The Bank of Japan kept its asset purchase program of 80 trillion yen a year unchanged and also pushed back its forecasted date for inflation to hit its 2 percent target rate.

Naturally, Japanese stocks plunged on Thursday following the central bank's non-decision. The country's main index, the Nikkei 225, plunged 3.61 percent - its worst one-day percentage loss since February 12. The price of oil ticked slightly higher Thursday morning, as did gold futures.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the verge of realizing a decade-old dream: Russian oil priced in Russia. The nation’s largest commodity exchange, whose chairman is Putin ally Igor Sechin, is courting international oil traders to join its emerging futures market. The goal is to increase revenue from Urals crude by disconnecting the price-setting mechanism from the world’s most-used Brent oil benchmark. Another aim is to move away from quoting petroleum in U.S. dollars.

BZ News Desk

Facebook FB opened higher by more than 10 percent to $119.90, a new all-time high, following the company's Q1 results. The social media behemoth posted earnings of $0.77 per share, $0.15 ahead of the Street’s consensus. Revenue of $5.38 billion, up an 52 percent year-over-year, beat estimates by $120 million.

The FOMC meeting was still on some people's minds. Read here to see two measure it will monitor, which differed from last month's meeting.

Find out what's going on in today's market and bring any questions you have to Benzinga's PreMarket Prep.

Sell-Side Themes

The Street loved Facebook's earnings beat, with JPMorgan holding the highest price target so far at $161.

Sell-Side's Most Noteworthy Calls

American Airlines AAL raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley.
L Brands LB upgraded to Outperform at Bernstein.
Resmed RMD raised to Neutral at Macquarie.
Twitter TWTR cut to Hold at Argus.
Hologic HOLX downgraded from Buy to Hold at Needham.
Hess HES cut to Neutral at UBS.
Infinera INFN cut to Neutral at Citi.
Whiting Petroleum WLL downgraded to Sector Perform at RBC.
America Movil AMX cut to Neutral at Bank of America.

Deal Talk

Abbott ABT will acquire St. Jude STJ for a total consideration of $25 billion. St. Jude shareholders will receive $46.75 in cash for each share owned in addition to 0.8708 shares of Abbott common stock, representing a total consideration of approximately $85 per share.

Confirmed: Comcast's CMCSA NBCUniversal will buy DreamWorks Animation DWA for $3.8 billion.

In The News

In perhaps a last-ditch move, Ted Cruz named Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential running mate. Fiorina built her ill-fated presidential bid around her business experience as former president of Hewlett-Packard HPE, which she led from 1999 to 2005.

North Korea fired a mid-range "Musudan" missile, but it "seems to have failed," a South Korean Defense Ministry official says, according to CNN. The military cannot confirm exactly when the missile exploded, but that it "crashed shortly after it was launched," the official said.

The judge in Dennis Hastert's hush-money case delivered the verbal equivalent of a public flogging. Before imposing the 15-month sentence, a far stiffer sentence than federal guidelines suggested, U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin spent nearly an hour rebuking the 74-year-old Republican for sexually abusing high school athletes decades ago, when he was a wrestling coach.

Buy-Side

Billionaire activist investor Bill Ackman has lost billions of dollars through his fund's large stake in Valeant VRX following the stock's nearly 85 percent collapse over the past year. Ackman also holds a seat at Valeant's board of directors and testified in front of a Senate special committee on Wednesday. The activist investor's involvement in Valeant has earned him the title of the "unofficial leader of a thundering herd," according to DealBook.

Blogosphere

"If there's one person Sony SNE shareholders should thank for the increase in operating profit last year, it's Adele," says Gadfly's Tim Culpan. "The six-time Grammy award-winning singer spearheaded growth in sales and operating profit at the company's music division, helping it boost margins to become Sony's most profitable nonfinancial business."

Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE: BRK-A) annual meeting is nothing if not a celebration. Less known is how the gatherings have become a magnet for protesters seeking to steal a bit of the spotlight, Bloomberg writes. The Nebraska Peace Foundation, which owns one Class A share, has called on Berkshire to disclose how climate change will affect insurance subsidiaries. Advocates plans to demonstrate outside the meeting Saturday to support its proxy proposal.

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