For now, the receipt of money laundering dollars obscures doubts about the economy

Money laundering is the main asset of economic policy today, but it does not dispel doubts about the ever-approaching debt maturities in 2025. Many believe that the shift is inexorable. But that possibility is not in the plan of the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputowhich negotiates mega REPOs and loans with multilateral organizations to cover the first part of the year and then borrows on the international capital market at lower levels of country risk.

On the other hand, the numbers of money laundering continue to surprise. A record $1,719 million was set on Wednesday. In the last 10 days alone, $7.89 billion has been laundered, representing 78% of the $10.17 billion collected since the start of laundering. Total private deposits in banks are $28.8 billion, of which banks hold $10.3 billion in cash.

Last week was negative for bonds and stocks and caution was noted in the strong market. But this phenomenon cannot be related to local humor, but rather to international humor, which faces the decline of economic activity in China and the instability of the United States.

“Sovereign bonds continued to rise, crossing the ceiling of $45 per GD35,” AdCap Grupo Financiero said in a report. “In our view, this wave of optimism comes from an acceleration in private sector deposits in USD, fueling growing confidence in the success of the Asset Regulation Regime, which grew $3 billion faster than the pace of the ‘Macri’ Asset Regularization Regime.” According to the report, “October will mark another challenging month in terms of dollar purchases for the central bank, as Argentina will have to pay 150% of regular monthly imports.” However, they warn that “a downgrade in Milea’s rating could present another limit to improvement momentum“.

Adcap recommends investing in global 2035, “where we expect growth of 14% by the end of the year, while remaining alert to central bank purchases. We believe that Global 2035 will continue to rise comfortably above the $45 level with the expansion of regularization and if the central bank does not lose reserves. Later, he adds that “for a more cautious approach, we continue to favor Global 2030 and BOPREAL 2026, for which we expect a more favorable market, even if the government has difficulty accumulating reserves or if Milea’s rating deteriorates.” Finally, he emphasizes that “given that the bears scenario implies significant volatility for cash settlement (CCL), we continue to favor USD portfolios and consider including equities in the aggressive portion instead of peso-denominated short-term bonds.

Consulting firm Equilibra, after surveying 130,000 prices, estimated inflation for the fourth week of this month at 0.6 percent and monthly inflation at 3.5 percent.

Consulting firm F2 Andres Reschini points out that the central bank “succeeded in reducing the selling in the open market market (MLC) by closing the week with a buying balance of $75 million, which accumulated this month, just one round from closing, a balance of $256 million buyers.” In this way he continues, “the gap between the cash-settled (CCL) and the official exchange rate has been stationary around 27% all week, down -10 percentage points from 37%, which coincides with the PAIS tax cut. (except that it did not cover the full spectrum of use ).It would be very important to break this mark as a sign of confidence. In addition, BCRA reported that during August the exchange rate interventions were 153 million USD, which is slightly less than 326 million in July, which on the other hand was half a month from announcement of this policy; “With which we would be talking about a more real market than we imagined, and that explains why the exchange rate is more in line with the behavior of other currencies in the region.”

According to F2, “the exchange rate is still on track to reach pre-December spike levels by the end of the first quarter of 2025, even for mixtureso it will be key to reduce inflation quickly and sustainably to avoid an exchange rate appreciation that is starting to crack the trade balance.” A positive from the report is that “LECAP closed with yield declines, more pronounced in shorter ones, and this is acceptable given that this could indicate that the pesos that were left out of the bid ($1 billion) went to seek instruments in pesos and did not create tension in the exchange gap.”

Morgan Stanley noted that “the July GDP indicator surprised to the upside (1.7% year-on-year). However, we caution investors not to extrapolate this growth number into the future, as June had too many holidays (which were not fully captured by the models) and some preliminary data for August suggests some weakness.” The entity notes that “support was impacted by a decline in government confidence in September . We believe that to the extent that activity resumes, support will remain durable.” According to investment bank Morgan Stanley, it predicts that “stock market unification could occur by the end of this year, although the lifting of capital controls is likely to continue to be gradual.”

For its part, JP Morgan, the largest bank in the United States, prefers to “maintain a conservative approach. “Therefore, sequential GDP growth for the third quarter will be cautiously revised to 4% (from 2.0% earlier). As for inflation, it predicts that “inflation slowed to 18.3% in December 2025 with the same magnitude of exchange rate movement (meaning 1.4% monthly). At the same time, GDP growth is estimated at 5% year-on-year, mainly thanks to a strong recovery in demand. While we expect growth to pick up next year to 4.4% y-o-y (from -3.7% y-o-y in 2024), we see this as consistent with a higher rate of inflation (33% as of December 2025). “.

Today, investors can react with a little more courage. Friday’s close suggests there is more risk appetite.