Argentina’s estimated stock of foreign-exchange coverage has climbed past US$12.100 million, rising 3.77 times from the end of May and turning hedging into one of the clearest signals of how fast demand for protection has returned. What was about US$3,200 million at the end of May is now a much larger position, built through a mix of Treasury securities, secondary-market activity and dollar futures.
The jump matters because it comes while the dollar has stayed broadly stabilized and the BCRA has kept buying reserves, even if at a slower pace. In the same period, the Treasury issued exchange-rate-adjusted securities equivalent to almost US$11.000 million since April, the average daily volume in the secondary market rose from US$261 million in April to US$532 million in July, and open interest in the dollar futures market moved from US$2,790 million in May to US$4,526 million in July. Together, those figures show a market that is not waiting for a break; it is paying for insurance now.
That insurance is also being shaped by official hands. The Treasury and the BCRA were active in both the secondary market and the dollar futures market, which means the recent stock of coverage reflects both private demand and public intervention. Luis Caputo also moved to encourage supply, saying companies that do not generate dollars will be able to take credit in foreign currency, a measure he said would help expand the flow of dollars into the market.
The strain in that story is hard to miss. The government says the exchange rate floats freely within the bands set 16 months ago, yet the Treasury sold dollars at the end of July to keep the wholesale rate from crossing $1,500. That intervention came after a visit from Kristalina Georgieva, who said there would be no extra money from the IMF and no rescue check from the United States Treasury, leaving the authorities with fewer cushions if pressure on the currency returns before the 2025 election cycle.
Nery Persichini said the rise in the risk country and the weakness of Argentine bonds appear to owe more to idiosyncratic factors than to an external shock, and he argued that reserve accumulation now seems limited to preventing another jump in the dollar. That is the real message in the surge above US$12.100 million: the market is not merely betting on a weaker currency, it is paying to stay ahead of one.
