A landmark week for Argentina's credit story — and we break it all down in under 3 minutes.

📊 In this episode:

*S&P upgrades Argentina to B- — now aligned with Fitch; country risk drops to 8-year low below 440bp
*Eight corporates upgraded: YPF, Pampa Energía, TGS, Telecom Argentina, Genneia, YPF Luz, EDEMSA, Aeropuertos Argentina 2000
*May inflation at 2.1%; core breaks below 2% for the first time
*Vice Minister Daza: "The dollar didn't flatten — it normalized"
*Industry and construction both -2.8% YoY; Argentina last in Americas for hiring expectations
*Delinquency hits 27% — Supervielle CEO sees 3-4 more tough months
*Adorni scandal goes global — FT publishes dedicated piece
*Louis Dreyfus announces US$400M sunflower plant in Bahía Blanca

📰 About the Argentina Brief:

The Argentina Brief includes a weekly X thread and video wrap-up, as well as a monthly English-language podcast covering the most important economic, financial, and business news from Argentina — built for investors, executives, and anyone following the Milei era in real time.

🔗 Follow for more Argentina coverage:*X Thread (full weekly breakdown): https://x.com/ArgentinaBrief/status/2066294994365825177

The weekly Argentina Brief breaks down the biggest economic and financial news from Argentina — in under 3 minutes.

This week:

*Stanley Druckenmiller is back in Argentine stocks. His Duquesne Family Office picked up US$128 million in YPF — now at 20-year highs — plus Vista Energy and the MSCI Argentina ETF. Morgan Stanley, UBS, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citi also bought Argentine equities in Q1.

*MSCI upgrade speculation is building. Morgan Stanley estimates Argentina could see US$5 billion in passive inflows if reclassified to emerging market status this month.

*Argentina's capital markets posted their best start to a year since 2015. Companies raised US$6.2 billion in debt issuances through April — dollar bonds drove nearly 90% of the total.

*Swiss trader Mercuria closed its US$1.42 billion acquisition of Shell's downstream assets — the Dock Sud refinery, 894 gas stations, and more.

*Chevron filed a RIGI application for El Trapial, a US$13.8 billion upstream project in Vaca Muerta — the first filed exclusively by a US company. RIGI now totals US$107 billion in committed investment across 38 projects.

*The Central Bank hit its US$10 billion reserve purchase target seven months early, on its 100th consecutive buying session. VP Vladimir Werning said the BCRA has restored its "firepower" ahead of the 2027 elections.

*Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno announced Argentina formally applied to join the Trans-Pacific trade bloc (CPTPP) — 12 countries representing 13% of global GDP.

*The latest REM survey: May inflation expected at 2.3%, breaking below 2% by August. Annual inflation forecast at 30.5% for 2026, 19.9% for 2027. GDP growth at 2.9% this year, 3.1% in 2027 and 2028.

Hosted by Francisco Aldaya, Bureau Chief for Argentina at Bloomberg Línea.

Argentina’s macro data finally gave Javier Milei some breathing room in May: economic activity beat expectations, manufacturing and construction rebounded, inflation slowed, and major RIGI investment announcements kept coming. But the country underneath the numbers still looked tense.

In Episode 3 of The Argentina Brief, Francisco Aldaya and Daniel Politi discuss Argentina’s hantavirus scare, cuts to disease-prevention programmes, the latest university marches, and warnings from government officials that austerity is reaching its limits. They also dig into the government’s strongest social talking point, falling poverty, and ask whether the headline number may be overstating the recovery, especially with disposable income still 12 percent below pre-Milei levels.

They also unpack the seemingly never-ending scandal involving Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni, the factional warfare inside Milei’s camp that spilled into public view through an anonymous Twitter account, and whether investors care when political chaos starts to look like a governability problem. Peter Thiel then enters the conversation, with Palantir, Argentina’s proposed “social digital twin,” data-security concerns, and a very odd Buenos Aires run that includes a chess tournament in Almagro and fake AI images of him eating milanesa. And because fake milanesa is no substitute for the real thing, Allie Lazar joins to discuss where Thiel, or anyone else, should actually go for the city’s best milanesas.

Recorded on May 26, 2026.