The desk flagged this exact fork on 7 September: a single wire report calling for a 25 basis point hike after November, set against WIG-BANKI's five-session rally on the assumption of further easing from 3.75%. The 9 September decision has now tested that fork directly. The result is neither confirmation nor rejection. Economists describe a Council that has not changed its wording since the previous meeting despite a deteriorating inflation outlook, a posture the wires read as cuts moving further away, not closer.

That is a genuine problem for the bank-sector trade, but not the one the hike call predicted. The Council held rather than signalled tightening. Under the falsifier set on 7 September, a hold with no tightening language would have sustained the cut thesis. A hold that ignores a worsening inflation picture is a different animal, closer to the Council simply declining to engage with the argument at all. WIG-BANKI still closed down 0.22% on 9 September, alongside a WIG20 drop of 0.72% and a broader WIG fall of 0.77%, even as the five-session gain into 3 September holds at 2.81% for the bank index versus 2.5% for WIG20.

A rally built on a rate path the Council refuses to either confirm or contest is trading a story the policymaker has stopped narrating.

The gap between the market's read and the data is not new. Polish manufacturing PMI fell to 48.3 in August. The NBP's own March projection already assumed CPI would sit above the 3.5% upper band through end 2026 before returning to the 2.5% point target only in mid-2027, a projection round that predates the fuel-cap expiry and the regional supply shock the desk noted on 7 September. Bank valuations have not moved to price a hike: Pekao trades at a P/E of 10.9 with a 7.4% dividend yield, PKO at 13.6 with 5.2%, levels consistent with a sector still priced for lower rates ahead, not higher ones. The złoty offers no independent read either. EUR/PLN sits at 4.3133 intraday on 9 September, down only 0.4% over five sessions, a currency move too small to carry a policy verdict on its own.

What this leaves is a market that keeps buying the cut story while the only entity that can confirm or deny it says nothing new. The next test is the Council's own updated projection round, expected to show a materially higher CPI path through mid-2027 than the March round assumed. A projection that pushes the return-to-target date out further would strip the rally of its last remaining premise without a single word of tightening rhetoric required.