The reference rate has stood at 3.75% since the 5 March cut, and the March projection round is the last one on record. It puts CPI above the 3.5% upper band through the end of 2026 after the fuel-cap expiry, with a return to the 2.5% point target only in mid-2027. The NBP's own July round, expected to show a materially higher CPI path per bank research previews cited in the data, has not been published. Poland's CPI final print lands 17 August; employment and wages data follow 18 August. Neither settles the projection question. Both feed it.
Set that gap against the tape. WIG-BANKI closed the 10 August session at 25,985.07, up 0.6% on the day but down 0.91% over the five sessions since 4 August. WIG20 moved the opposite way over the same window, up 0.69% over five sessions to 4,024.05. That split matters. The broad index kept climbing while the rate-sensitive bank gauge alone gave ground. A market-wide risk-on read cannot explain a sector-specific pullback; something bank-specific, or rate-specific, is doing the work.
This is the first genuine test since the 3 August note flagged the gap between WIG-BANKI's gain and the missing projection. The prior piece's falsifier had two legs: either the NBP's July round pushes the return-to-target date to 2027 Q4 or later, or an identified alternative driver explains the move instead of the rate-cut premise. Neither leg is settled by what is in this data. The projection round still has not appeared, so that leg is not testable yet. No fiscal, capital or single-name driver for WIG-BANKI specifically appears in this pack either. What has changed is the direction of the move itself: the rate-cut premise the sector was pricing on the way up is now unwinding on the way down, before the test meant to confirm or deny it has even arrived.
A sector priced for further NBP easing without a projection to confirm it was always trading ahead of its own evidence, and now it is retreating ahead of that evidence too.
The valuation backdrop still shows what a projection-driven repricing would work against. PKO Bank Polski trades at a P/E of 12.8 with a 5.6% dividend yield; Bank Pekao at 10.3 with 7.8%; mBank at 15.5. None of these levels have moved enough on their own to explain a five-session index decline. The multiples still assume the easing path holds. If the July projection, once published, confirms a longer road back to target, these multiples are the ones that would need to reprice, not the index level alone.
What the evidence cannot show is causation for the five-session slip itself. One week of index weakness against a still-missing projection is not proof the market is repricing for a delay. It could as easily reflect profit-taking after WIG20's own record run into early August, unrelated to the rate view. The desk is watching two things now, in sequence: whether the July projection, when it lands, moves the return-to-target date to 2027 Q4 or later, and whether WIG-BANKI's slide extends or reverses once the CPI final print on 17 August and the wages data on 18 August are in. Until the projection appears, the original reading is neither confirmed nor overturned. It is simply being tested by a tape that has started moving against it.
