European Closes: Euro Stoxx 50 -0.79% at 6,275, DAX -0.60% at 25,415, CAC 40 -0.76% at 8,118, FTSE 100 +0.44% at 10,698, SMI +0.75% at 13,879, FTSE MIB -1.68% at 51,629, IBEX 35 -1.38% at 19,566, PSI -1.52% at 9,380, AEX -0.04% at 1,098

Closing wraps of this kind matter less for the headline moves than for the internal dispersion, and here the dispersion is the story: a down day for the core and a notably heavier one for the periphery (MIB, IBEX, PSI all underperforming the Euro Stoxx 50 by a wide margin), set against gains in the FTSE 100 and the SMI. That configuration, weakness concentrated in Italy, Spain and Portugal while London and Zurich hold up, is the classic signature of a risk-off session expressed through the periphery rather than a uniform equity selloff, and on past occasions has coincided with widening in peripheral sovereign spreads over bunds, since the BTP-bund differential and the MIB's bank weighting tend to move together. The FTSE's outperformance on a down continental day typically reflects its defensiveness and commodity tilt rather than idiosyncratic UK news, a recurring pattern. What is worth establishing next is whether the session's driver was rates, a single heavy sector, or a credit impulse, which the cross-asset close (peripheral spreads, EUR, bunds) will confirm. Absent an obvious catalyst, single-session dispersion of this size has tended to mean-revert rather than extend.