The Market In 5 Minutes: It's Brexit Time

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 News

U.S. stock futures traded higher in early pre-market trade. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 159 points to 17,846.00, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures rose 19 points to 2,095.75. Futures for the Nasdaq 100 index gained 42.25 points to 4,436.25.

Oil prices traded higher as Brent crude futures gained 1.50 percent to trade at $50.09 per barrel, while US WTI crude futures also rose 1.30 percent to trade at $49.29 a barrel.

Voting got underway to decide whether the UK should leave the European Union. Final results of the poll are due about 2:00 a.m. ET Friday.

BZ News Desk Focus

USA Initial Jobless Claims for Jun 259.0K vs 270.0K consensus estimate. USA Continuing Jobless Claims for Jun 2.14M vs 2.15M consensus estimate.

Some of last night's and this morning's most notable earnings:

Blackberry BBRY Reports Q1 EPS $0.00 vs. Est $(0.08), Rev. $424M vs. Est. $470.9M
Bed Bath & Beyond BBBY Reports Q1 EPS $0.80 vs. Est. $0.86, Rev. $2.738B vs. Est. $2.78B
Red Hat RHT Q1 $0.50 EPS in line, Sales $568M vs $563M Est
Barnes & Noble BKS Reports Q4 Sales $877M vs $889.2M Est., GAAP EPS $(0.42), Adj. EPS $(0.24) vs $(0.24) Est.

Sell-Side Themes

The Street was largely skeptical of Tesla's TSLA offer to acquire SolarCity. In fact, Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas -- one of Tesla's biggest supporters -- downgraded the stock for the first time since 2012.

Sell-Side's Most Noteworthy Calls

JPMorgan downgraded Valeant VRX to Neutral.
Morgan Stanley downgraded SolarCity SCTY to Equal-Weight.
Susquehanna upgraded Micron MU to Positive.
Nomura upgraded Home Depot HD to Buy.
Maxim initiated coverage on Amazon AMZN at Buy.
Morgan Stanley started coverage on Boeing BA at Overweight.

Deal Talk

France's Sanofi SNY is said to be adding contingent value rights or CVR's to its offer to acquire Medivation MDVN, according to sources at Bloomberg. The CVR's would require Sanofi to make future payments based on the achievement of certain milestones.

Qunar Cayman Islands QUNR, China's leading mobile and online travel platform, announced its board has received a preliminary non-binding proposal letter from Ocean Management Limited to acquire all outstanding ordinary shares of Qunar. The proposed purchase price for each American depositary share of the Company is $30.39 in cash, which represents an approximately 15 percent premium to the closing trading price of the Company's ADSs on June 22.

In The News

Georgia congressman John Lewis deployed a strategy from his days as a civil rights activist and coupled it with social media to stage a dramatic sit-in Wednesday on the House floor with his fellow Democrats to force a vote on gun control — and disrupt political business as normal well into the night. As midnight Thursday rolled in, the sit-in had lasted for over 12 hours.

For office workers everywhere, the news that regular exercise isn’t enough to keep the harmful effects of sitting all day could come as a jolt. When added to time spent sitting at home, or in the car commuting, many people sit for longer than nine hours a day.

Blogosphere

Are we in the midst of the greatest political instability in a century?

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