Minutes from the Federal Reserve's meeting in April revealed little change to current policy. The markets closed sharply higher with the Dow jumping 158 points to 16,533. Nasdaq soared 34 points to 4,131.
On the upside
Sidoti upgraded EZCORP (Nasdaq: EZPW) from a Neutral rating to a Buy rating.
Reuters reported that Element Financial offered $1.35 billion in cash to acquire PHH's (NYSE: PHH) fleet leasing business.
Marcato purchased a 7.2% stake in Life Time Fitness (NYSE: LTM).
On the downside
Investors locked in profits on bluebird bio (Nasdaq: BLUE).
Methes Energies International (Nasdaq: MEIL) priced its public offering of 2.5 million common shares at the discounted price of $2.00 per share.
Rio Alto Mining (NYSE: RIOM) will merge with Sulliden Gold.
In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of nearly 2 to 1 on the NYSE and by nearly 3 to 2 on Nasdaq. The broader S&P 500 gained 15 points to 1888. Bitcoin rose $7.27 or 1.49% to $487.12.
