Argentina’s wholesale dollar, trading at 1,545.5 pesos on Monday, could reach 1,850 pesos by the end of December — an implied rise of nearly 20% — according to a group of analysts from national and foreign banks and consultancies compiled by FocusEconomics, iProfesional reported.
The projection lands as country risk climbs to 939 basis points, its highest level this year.
The gap between a quiet currency market and a stressed sovereign bond market is the story here. The wholesale dollar has gained 0.8% in November and 6.1% across 2026, while sovereign debt prices keep deteriorating. That divergence, analysts say, cannot hold indefinitely.
The tension is driven by these figures. Argentina faces roughly US$29 billion in debt obligations during 2027, a year that also brings presidential elections. The Central Bank bought only US$194 million in reserves across the last ten sessions, participating in just four of them, per the iProfesional report — a reserve accumulation pace that complicates the repayment picture.
Analysts forecast peso depreciation amid rising country risk
- The most pessimistic forecast (Pantheon Macroeconomics) sees the wholesale dollar at 1,850 pesos by late December, roughly 20% above Monday’s 1,545.5 open.
- Country risk at 939 basis points — up 19% in early November — has decoupled from a currency held down by tight peso liquidity.
- Futures markets price December at 1,599 pesos, below the 1,625.3 FocusEconomics consensus, signaling traders doubt the bear case.
Traders price less depreciation than analysts
The ranking of pessimists is led by Pantheon Macroeconomics at 1,850 pesos for end-December. Santander (NYSE: SAN), Invecq Consulting and UBS (NYSE: UBS) cluster at 1,700, while Aurum expects 1,680, according to the FocusEconomics survey iProfesional cited.
But the balance sheet tells a different story than the forecasters. On the Matba-Rofex futures market, the December wholesale dollar contract settled at 1,599 pesos — below even the 1,625.3 consensus. Traders with money on the line are pricing less depreciation than the analysts are.
Further out, the consensus puts the dollar at 1,998 pesos by October of next year, just before the presidential vote — a 29% climb from current levels. That election-year wall of maturities and political uncertainty is what the forecast curve is really measuring.
Why the peso is holding while bonds bleed
Tight monetary conditions are doing the heavy lifting. The one-day rate briefly touched 200% before Thursday’s bank holiday, though the weighted average sat at 29%, the research team at Puente noted, as iProfesional reported.
“The dollar is contained, but with tensions: the contraction of the amount of pesos in the economy helped moderate the currency depreciation. However, the gap reached 9.5% and depreciation expectations increased,” said Maximiliano Gutiérrez, economist at Fundación Mediterránea.
Gutiérrez added that Argentine country risk has hit its highest level of the year and decoupled from other regional economies, even as financial pressures have not transferred with the same intensity to the exchange rate. The 9.5% gap between official and parallel rates is itself a warning sign — it has widened as expectations of depreciation build.
The Treasury’s January problem
The near-term trigger is a January payment wall. Pablo Repetto, manager at Aurum, framed the stakes plainly in comments to iProfesional.
“The Treasury has to buy a lot of dollars to be able to pay the January 9 maturities, so if it doesn’t buy them, I don’t believe that with this country risk they can get another REPO, or else a very high rate will have to be paid,” Repetto told iProfesional.
Repetto called his own expectation “a fairly normal expectation” given the Treasury’s dollar needs, adding that he expects inflation to hold near 2%, as in recent months. Inflation pass-through, in other words, is not the main driver — financing is.
What would break the calm
Bautista Aboy, portfolio manager at Mills Capital, told iProfesional the dollar “could continue under pressure if growth expectations decline and rate differentials against other economies compress.” He flagged the continuity of Scott Bessent’s role in this relationship as a variable to watch, arguing that American support responds to geopolitical and strategic interests that transcend party dynamics and the balance of forces in the US Congress.
For Vector Investments, the determinants are reserves, currency flows and country risk — the metrics that will show whether financial stability is sustainable and whether it transmits to the real economy. For businesses and households, the practical read is straightforward: a 6.1% annual depreciation against nearly 2% monthly inflation implies a slowly eroding purchasing power, and importers hedging December payables face a substantial spread between the 1,599 futures price and the 1,850 worst-case scenario.
The open question is whether the Treasury can rebuild reserves before January 9 without pushing the currency loose from its moorings. As Repetto put it, without those dollar purchases, any new repo “or else a very high rate” is the alternative.
