By Nick Brown
A historic summit scheduled for Tuesday between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un helped the S&P 500 rise, helped by gains in utility Sempra Energy.
Trump, in Singapore for the summit, said the meeting could "work out very nicely" as the countries try to narrow differences on how to end a nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 47.85 points, or 0.19 percent, to 25,364.38, the S&P 500 gained 8.63 points, or 0.31 percent, to 2,787.66 and the Nasdaq Composite added 19.43 points, or 0.25 percent, to 7,664.94.
Sempra Energy proved the biggest driver of the S&P's rally, surging 15.4 percent s of 11:51 a.m. ET, after two key shareholders recommended six new directors for the company's board and urged a strategic review of its business.
The North Korea summit will be followed by meetings of the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, as well as a Brexit bill vote in the British parliament.
Risky assets were well supported on Monday after comments from Italy's new coalition government, saying it had no intention of leaving the euro zone and planned to cut debt. The statements pushed Italian stocks up more than 3.5 percent, while the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index rose 0.82 percent.
MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.42 percent.
The gains came despite a Group of Seven summit over the weekend in which Trump upset the G7's efforts to show a united front, backing out of a previous agreement and calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "very dishonest and weak."
Trump announced he was withdrawing from the joint communique hammered out at a Canadian summit on Saturday, drawing sharp criticism from Germany and France.
But "markets are generally overlooking negative takeaway" from the meeting, said Peter Cecchini, chief market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York, focused instead on the week's upcoming events as well as the news from Italy.
The prospect of Italy remaining in the euro zone sent Italian borrowing costs down sharply, as the euro rallied 0.29 percent to $1.18, near a two-week high of $1.1840.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, fell 0.07 percent.
U.S. Treasury yields, meanwhile, rose ahead of plans by the Treasury Department to sell $54 billion in new coupon-bearing supply, and with the Federal Reserve expected to raise interest rates on Wednesday.
Benchmark 10-year notes last fell 6/32 in price to yield 2.9571 percent, from 2.935 percent late on Friday.
The 30-year bond last fell 11/32 in price to yield 3.0984 percent, from 3.082 percent at the end of last week.
Treasury will sell $32 billion in three-year notes and $22 billion in 10-year notes on Monday, to be followed by a $14 billion sale of 30-year bonds on Tuesday.
In commodities, oil prices fell in early activity, pulled down by rising Russian production, before regaining momentum later.
U.S. crude rose 0.73 percent to $66.22 per barrel and Brent was last at $76.63, up 0.22 percent on the day.
(Reporting by Nick Brown; additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar, Karen Brettell and Tom Finn; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)