Argentina’s S&P Merval index fell 1.55% on Thursday, closing at 3,058,093 points after failing to hold above 3.1 million points. The drop came as investors took profits in energy and financial shares that had recently surged near record levels. The peso barely moved, with the official exchange rate easing 0.16% to 1,508 pesos per US dollar.
Who Pays When the Rally Breaks
YPF, the state-controlled oil company and a favourite of President Javier Milei’s reform trade, led the losses, dropping 3.1% on heavy turnover. The article said YPF had US$13 million in turnover. Central Puerto dropped 1.8%. Banco Macro managed a slight gain of 0.2%, and the article said banks bucked the trend in a defensive shift. The selling was concentrated in stocks that had led the so-called reform trade, a bet on Milei’s deregulation and fiscal agenda.
That’s the hierarchy on display: the market’s winners at the top, the losses pushed down onto the same companies and workers tied to the state and finance machine. The numbers don’t hide it. They just dress it up in trading language.
The Reform Trade and Its Limits
The move was local. Wall Street’s S&P 500 rose 1.06%, and the article said the driver was local profit-taking rather than global risk aversion. It described the pullback as a healthy pause from record highs, not a change in the underlying bullish story for Argentine assets.
That bullish story rests on Milei’s deregulation and fiscal agenda, the same package that turns public assets and financial bets into a playground for investors. YPF sits at the center of that arrangement, state-controlled yet treated like a prize in the reform trade. When the trade cools, the pain doesn’t stay abstract. It lands in the index, in turnover, in the people and institutions tied to the bet.
The article said the Merval had closed the previous session up 1.86%, with reform-trade favourites YPF and Pampa Energía posting strong weekly gains. It also said the index was still in an uptrend and that a decisive break below 3,000,000 would be a more serious technical development. For now, it said, the chart describes a market consolidating after a powerful rally rather than one rolling over.
What the Chart Says, and What It Doesn’t
The day’s numbers showed the S&P Merval at 3,058,093, USD/ARS at 1,508, YPFD turnover at US$13 million and a 52-week range for the peso of 1,330 to 1,514. The article said the peso’s stability and the rally in US equities weigh against a narrative of broad risk aversion, and that the key variable to watch is whether the index holds the 3,000,000-point level in the coming sessions.
That’s the language of managed calm. A market can fall, a state-controlled oil company can lead the losses, and the story still gets framed as a pause. The apparatus keeps the focus on whether the index holds, not on who gets exposed when the reform trade starts wobbling. The chart may still point up. The pressure still runs downward.