Stock Market Live May 13: Egg Prices Down, S&P 500 (VOO) Up

This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates.

Good morning, investors!

Inflation news, or the lack of it, is in the headlines on Tuesday as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the inflation rate in April slowed to 2.3%, less than the 2.4% rate that analysts had predicted.

Core inflation, which excludes the cost of food and energy, was higher, 2.8%. Helping to explain the difference is the falling price of oil, which cost $70 and even $80 a barrel at times last year, but sells in the low $60s today. Also, the price of eggs was down 12.7% sequentially (albeit up 49.3% year over year).

This good news for the economy had modest effect on the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) this morning, which opened essentially flat (up a few hundredths of a percent).

Earnings

Earnings reports are coming fast and furious, with roughly 100 companies having reported before the bell. Winners today include semiconductors company Silicon Labs (Nasdaq: SLAB) and Consolidated Water (Nasdaq: CWCO), both of which beat on earnings, and Under Armour (NYSE: UA), which beat on sales.

Losers include renewable energy companies Plug Power (Nasdaq: PLUG), Blink Charging (Nasdaq: BLNK), and TPI Composites (Nasdaq: TPIC), all with earnings misses.

Analyst Calls

A few upgrades are starting to roll in, in the wake of President Trump’s weekend Chinese tariffs pause. S&P 500 component Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) won an upgrade to outperform from Baird this morning, which sees “lower-than-normal seasonal dealer inventory build, much better-than-expected orders/backlog, and stabilization in dealer retail sales.” Goldman Sachs upgraded another component company, Valero (NYSE: VLO), to buy, forecasting “EPS to grow from around $7.50 this year to over $12.50 in 2027 through a combination of share repurchases, limited refining capacity additions and improving crude differentials from the return of OPEC+ supply.”

Component Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) got downgraded to market perform at Leerink Partners over concerns its Darzalex cancer drug will face price controls in the U.S. in 2029, rather than 2033 as anticipated. “The drug’s US profit contribution could take a meaningful hit,” warns Leerink.