While you were sleeping: UPDATED Saudi deals, oil price boost stocks on Wall Street

Wall Street and oil moved higher, following a weekend during which US President Donald Trump made few stumbles in his first overseas trip and major oil producers seemed to agree on extending a plan to curtail output.

OPEC and its partners are expected to prolong an agreement to limit production when they gather this Thursday. US crude futures rose 0.8% to $US50.73 a barrel, its highest settle in a month.

"The decision [to extend cuts] seems to be almost a done deal," Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB Markets, told Reuters.

"There seems to be a very high harmony in the group."

Wall Street also advanced as President Trump's travels in the Middle East provided a welcome reprieve from the intensifying crisis over reports that he tried to obstruct a probe into his campaign's links to Russia.

Saudi deals boost Dow
In Saudi Arabia, Mr Trump announced business deals and potential investments valued at $US300 billion that will benefit a range of defence and other companies.

At the close of trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 89.99 points, or 0-4%, to 20,894.83. The Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 0.8% to 6133.62 and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 0.5% to 2394.02.

"The bar for success has been set extremely low for President Trump and it seems that he's been able to meet that over the weekend," Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst, Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh, told Reuters.

The Dow moved higher as Boeing added 1.6% and Cisco rose 1.2% on the Saudi deals.

Lockheed Martin climbed 1.6% and Blackstone Group surged 6.7% after Saudi Arabia agreed to commit $20 billion to the private-equity giant’s new infrastructure fund.

Ford rises on new CEO
Shares of Ford rose 2.1% after it appointed Jim Hackett as the new chief executive, replacing Mark Fields.

"We need to speed up our decision-making, we need to invest our capital where we can create value, and we have to move decisively to address underperforming areas," Ford chairman Bill Ford told reporters.

The latest US economic data were better than expected, as the Chicago Federal Reserve's national activity index climbed to 0.49 in April, up from 0.07 in March and the highest reading in four years.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index finished the session edging less than 0.1% down from the previous close. France's CAC40 Index eased 0.03% lower, while Germany's DAX Index fell 0.2%.

The UK's FTSE 100 Index gained 0.3%, led by Marks & Spencer and Burberry.

The euro strengthened, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the currency's weakness was in part to blame for the nation's trade surplus.

"The euro is too weak – that's because of [European Central Bank] policy – and so German products are cheap in relative terms," Ms Merkel said in Berlin during a school visit on Monday, Bloomberg reported. "So they're sold more."

(BusinessDesk)