Let me concede ING's read on the zloty up front — the reasoning is sound. The NBP underwhelmed, the market wanted more of a hawkish signal than it got, and the scope for weakness against the euro is genuinely there. Every FX desk from Warsaw to London is looking at the same rate-differential picture and drawing a similar arrow. Now here is what "the call is right" tells almost nothing about: what to actually do with it. Whether EUR/PLN drifts one percent, five, or ten depends entirely on which seat someone occupies and which book they are running. Three scenarios follow.
The reason I want to walk through three imagined desks rather than argue the macro is that every FX call I have ever seen go wrong went wrong in the implementation, not the thesis. The thesis is the easy part. It is the position sizing, the hedging horizon, the swap cost, the slippage, the emotional stamina — that is where a "correct" view stops paying and starts costing. So let us build three composite characters, each of whom read the same ING note, each of whom agrees the zloty has scope for weakness, and each of whom will end the year with a completely different P&L.
Scenario 1: The Warsaw Corporate Treasurer Hedging EUR Receivables
Picture a treasurer at a mid-cap Polish exporter — auto parts, say, or industrial packaging. Roughly seventy percent of the top line invoices in euros. She does not have a view on EUR/PLN. She has a budget rate. Her job is to protect a margin the CFO already promised to the board, and her performance is measured against a corporate rate that was baked into the annual plan back in the autumn.
For this treasurer, the ING call is not a trading idea. It is a piece of intelligence about where her natural exposure is drifting. If EUR/PLN moves against her — meaning the euro strengthens against the zloty, meaning her PLN-denominated cost base stays the same while her EUR receivables translate into more zlotys — that is actually good for reported margin. Her problem is the opposite: an unexpectedly strong zloty would compress her margin. So when the desk research says "scope for zloty weakness", her instinctive read is not "buy EUR/PLN". It is "we might be able to reduce our hedge ratio because the natural drift is now with us, not against us."
But here is what a first-year treasurer does not yet know, and what her boss will tell her the moment she suggests unwinding forwards: hedge policy is not a market call. The company hedges because the CFO does not want the P&L held hostage to Warsaw MPC personalities. If the treasury desk starts adding or removing hedges based on a sell-side note — even one whose thesis is sound — the treasurer has quietly stopped hedging and started speculating. Her book looks the same on paper. Her exposure profile has completely changed.
The imagined move a seasoned treasurer makes on this note is smaller and more specific. She keeps the core hedge ratio unchanged — say seventy percent of forecast receivables on rolling three-to-six-month forwards. She reviews her hedge tenor. If ING's timeline is a two-quarter view, she checks whether her current hedges are concentrated in the front of that window or the back. And she notes the assumption she is now making: her decision to leave the ratio untouched is itself a view. It is a view that the base-case zloty weakness is not asymmetric enough to justify overriding policy.
That is a very quiet, very grown-up response to a note that on Twitter looked like a trade signal.
Scenario 2: The London Macro Analyst Building the Rate-Differential Trade
Now imagine a discretionary macro analyst at a London fund who runs a book with an EM-crosses mandate. She does have a view on EUR/PLN. She reads the ING note, agrees with the thesis, and is now trying to size a long EUR/PLN position — which in a rate-differential framework is a carry-negative trade she needs to justify on spot terms.
Here is where the math actually earns its keep. Let us walk it through, because this is the part every retail account will skip and every institutional desk will do first.
Assume her fund's target risk on any single EM-crosses expression is fifty basis points of NAV at the 95th-percentile daily move. Her NAV is 800 million dollars. Fifty basis points of that is 4 million dollars of daily risk. Twenty-day realised volatility on EUR/PLN over a normal regime sits around 0.5 to 0.6 percent daily. Take 0.55 percent as her working assumption. At the 95th percentile — roughly 1.65 standardised — that is 0.91 percent of daily move. Her notional exposure is therefore 4 million divided by 0.0091, or roughly 440 million dollars of EUR/PLN. Call it 400 million to leave a buffer.
Now the carry. Her funding cost is the differential between the front-end euro rate she is effectively borrowing and the front-end zloty rate she is effectively holding. If the differential is running against her — the zloty leg pays more than the euro leg — she is bleeding roll every day the trade is on. Assume the negative carry is 250 basis points annualised. On a 400 million dollar notional, that is 10 million dollars of carry cost per year, or roughly 27,000 dollars a day the trade is on. Her spot thesis needs to move enough to cover that bleed before it starts printing profit.
If she thinks EUR/PLN can drift three percent higher over a two-quarter horizon, three percent on 400 million is 12 million dollars. Subtract six months of accumulated negative carry — call it half of the annualised 10 million, so 5 million — and the net is 7 million dollars of expected P&L against her fifty-bip daily risk allocation. That is a Sharpe conversation, not a directional one. She might well decide to size smaller, or express the view via option structures that flip the carry math entirely.
The point is not the specific numbers. The point is that a "correct" ING call has to survive an eight-line reproducible math check before it becomes a position, and most of the time the answer to that check is: size half, or express differently, or wait for a better entry.
Scenario 3: The Retail Trader Who Read the ING Note on Twitter
Imagine a retail account holder in Frankfurt or Manchester or Dubai who follows a few FX Twitter accounts, saw the ING headline quoted at 400 characters, and decided that long EUR/PLN was the trade of the week. He opens an account with a broker that lets him take the position at high leverage — perhaps Exness at up to 1:2000, or HF Markets at up to 1:1000, or FBS at up to 1:3000 if he really wants to reach. He funds the account with 500 dollars because that is what the broker's minimum allowed for the account type he wanted.
Here is what nobody in the Twitter thread told him. EUR/PLN is not a headline major. It is an EM cross. Spreads are wider than they are on EUR/USD, financing charges are meaningful, and the overnight swap on a long EUR/PLN position can and often does run against the direction the retail trader thinks he is playing. He is long the pair spot, but he is also short the higher-yielding currency in the swap leg — which means every night the position sits open, the broker debits his account for the carry.
Listen — I know the note said "scope for weakness". Here is what nobody in that thread will tell you. If you put on this trade at 1:500 with 500 dollars, and the pair goes against you 0.4 percent before it goes with you — a very normal intraday range for this cross — you are already stopped out on a margin call before your thesis has a chance to work. And even if you size properly, you are paying financing every night in the wrong direction. When I look at retail accounts that traded EUR-EM crosses in 2018 and 2022, the failure pattern was not that the directional call was wrong. It was that the account died from time-in-position — either from carry drag, from noise stops, or from the trader watching a 30-pip wobble and closing the winner too early.
The imagined move a retail trader with any survival instinct makes on this note is: he does not put the trade on. Or he puts it on with a size so small it is essentially an education tax — 0.01 lots on a demo-like scale, just enough to feel the swap tick every night and learn what carry means before he ever risks real capital. That is what year one is supposed to look like. Most people quit before they get to year two because they insisted on skipping the education tax and put full-size positions on views they read on Twitter.
What All Three Scenarios Share
Three desks, three P&Ls, one thesis. What binds them is not the view — the view is identical. What binds them is the recognition that a "correct" macro call has no economic content until it is filtered through a book, a risk budget, and a time horizon.
The Warsaw treasurer, the London analyst, and the retail account holder are looking at the same ING note and effectively pricing three different products. The treasurer is pricing policy discipline against a corporate rate. The analyst is pricing a Sharpe-adjusted expected value against a negative-carry structure. The retail holder is pricing a directional bet whose largest hidden cost is his own attention span. In none of the three cases does the ING thesis, taken in isolation, tell any of them what to do.
There is a further shared truth worth naming: every one of these desks is reading the ING note against the NBP's own communication — its statement, its post-decision press conference, and eventually its MPC minutes. That is where the primary-document cross-reference lives. ING's read is one interpretation of the underwhelm. The NBP's own words are another. The two rarely align cleanly, and the space between them is where the interesting trading — and the interesting hedging — actually lives. A treasurer, an analyst, and a retail trader who never read past the sell-side note are all trading on someone else's edit of the primary source.
Which Scenario Is You
Read that back and answer honestly. If your book has a natural EUR receivable or payable exposure and your P&L is measured against an internal budget rate, you are the treasurer — and your job on this note is to check hedge tenor, not to unwind ratios. If you run a discretionary book with a risk budget and can express the view via forwards, options, or a cash spot position with real financing, you are the analyst — and your job is to do the eight-line math before you touch the ticket. If you have a screen, a broker account, and an opinion, you are the retail trader — and your job is to be honest about whether you can survive the swap and the noise long enough for the thesis to matter.
The uncomfortable answer for most readers is that they are the third character and would rather see themselves as the second. That gap is where retail accounts die. The mentor's answer is not to talk anyone out of the trade. It is to make them do the same math the analyst did, at their own scale, before the ticket goes on.
Three calendar events will test all of this. First: the next NBP rate decision and the tone of the accompanying statement — that is when the market re-prices whether "underwhelm" was a one-meeting phenomenon or a stance. Second: the following ECB rate decision and its updated staff projections — the euro leg of the pair does half the work, and if the ECB tilts differently than expected, the whole differential math shifts. Third: the next Polish CPI print — the data that will either vindicate or embarrass the NBP's caution. Watch those three. If the ING thesis is going to work, you will see it in that sequence, not on Twitter.
FAQ
Why is negative carry such a big deal for a long EUR/PLN position?
Long EUR/PLN means holding a lower-yielding currency against a higher-yielding one. In practice, every night the position stays open, the broker debits a financing charge that reflects that rate differential. Over months, the accumulated cost can eclipse the spot move the trader was anticipating. Retail traders often ignore this because their platforms show swap in a separate line item, but institutional analysts model it into expected P&L from the first ticket.
Does the ING call mean the NBP made the wrong decision?
Not necessarily — those are two different questions. ING's note reads the market's disappointment against what a hawkish signal would have looked like. The NBP is running a domestic mandate: inflation, growth, employment, financial stability. A decision that underwhelms markets can still be defensible on domestic policy grounds. This is why reading the NBP's own statement alongside sell-side notes matters. The two are answering different questions.
How much can EUR/PLN realistically move on a rate-differential story?
In normal regimes, twenty-day realised volatility on EUR/PLN sits well below one percent daily, and quarterly moves of one to three percent are common when the rate story is the dominant driver. Larger moves — five percent or more over a similar window — usually require either a policy surprise, a broader risk-off episode, or an external shock like an energy price spike. A pure "central bank underwhelmed" narrative rarely delivers the double-digit move retail readers expect.
Should a Polish exporter increase or decrease its hedge ratio on this note?
Neither, in most cases. A hedge ratio is a policy setting driven by the CFO's risk appetite and the board's tolerance for translation volatility. Tactically adjusting hedges based on a sell-side note is drift — the treasury has quietly stopped hedging and started expressing a view. The disciplined move is to keep the ratio, review hedge tenor to align with the note's time horizon, and document that the decision not to override policy is itself a considered position.
Why do brokers like Exness or FBS offer such high leverage on EM crosses?
These offshore-regulated brokers operate under regulatory regimes that permit leverage far above what tier-one jurisdictions allow. Exness lists maximum leverage at 1:2000 and FBS at 1:3000. The leverage is real, but it is a marketing feature, not a risk instruction. On a low-liquidity EM cross with wider spreads and meaningful overnight financing, high leverage is precisely the wrong tool. The math of position sizing does not change because the platform permits abuse of it.
What primary sources should a serious reader check before trading this view?
Two documents, in order. First, the NBP's own post-decision statement and, once released, the MPC minutes — those are the primary record of what the central bank actually said and thought. Second, the ECB's most recent monetary policy statement and staff macroeconomic projections, because the euro leg of the pair does half the work on any rate-differential story. Only after reading both should any reader take a sell-side note as one interpretation among several.
Is EUR/PLN suitable for a retail trader with a small account?
Honestly, no — not as a first or second instrument. The pair has wider spreads than the majors, meaningful and often adverse overnight financing, and thinner liquidity outside of European hours. A retail trader with a small account will pay a disproportionate share of P&L in costs before the directional view has time to work. Learning FX pricing on a major pair first, and only stepping to EM crosses once carry and spread mechanics feel second nature, is the durable path.
What is the single biggest mistake retail traders make on notes like this one?
They confuse being right about the direction with being profitable on the position. A view can be correct on a two-quarter horizon and still stop out a leveraged account four times before it plays. The mistake is treating a sell-side thesis as a trade signal rather than as one input into a properly sized, properly financed, properly time-horizoned position. The correction is boring: smaller size, longer tenor, honest accounting for carry, and the discipline to sit through noise that has nothing to do with the thesis.