Bolsas y Mercados Argentinos (BYMA): how it works, who runs it, and what issuers must disclose
What this exchange is
Bolsas y Mercados Argentinos — universally known by its acronym BYMA — is the organisation responsible for the operation of Argentina’s primary stock exchange. It grew out of a restructuring of the older Mercado de Valores de Buenos Aires (MERVAL), the Buenos Aires stock market, which itself traces its roots to the Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires (BCBA), the Buenos Aires Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1854.
BYMA formally began operations on 2 January 2017, after the CNV — Argentina’s securities regulator — authorised the new entity on 29 December 2016.
The ISO 10383 Market Identifier Code (MIC), the four-letter code that data systems use to pinpoint a trading venue, for Bolsas y Mercados Argentinos is XBUE. Shares, bonds and other securities are priced and settled in Argentine pesos (ARS), though many instruments — especially government bonds — are also quoted and can settle in US dollars.
Nearly 90% of all securities authorised for public offering in Argentina’s local markets are traded on BYMA. It hosts corporate bonds — debt securities issued by companies — as well as government bonds, the instruments the state uses to borrow money.
Company shares and derivatives such as options and futures are also traded, but be candid about this: the market is small and lopsided. A handful of large-cap firms represent a significant share of traded value, and the typical leading sectors are financials, energy, and commodity exporters.
For foreign readers used to deep equity markets, BYMA is a thin venue for shares, but a genuinely active one for government and corporate debt.
Who owns it
BYMA was created when MERVAL carried out a partial spin-off of its stock-market assets to constitute a new entity, incorporating the Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires as a shareholder in the process. BYMA’s share capital is represented by 76,250,000 ordinary shares with a nominal value of ARS 1 each, one vote per share.
Sixty per cent of those shares are held by former MERVAL shareholders — the broker-dealers who had historically made up that institution’s membership — while the Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires (BCBA) holds the remaining 40%.
BYMA’s own shares were authorised for public offering by the CNV on 16 March 2017. That means BYMA is itself a listed company, traded on its own exchange under the ticker BYMA.
BYMA’s bylaws prohibit the issuance of preferred shares, participation shares, or shares with plural votes, precisely because the company is subject to the public-offering regime.
BYMA is also the main controlling shareholder of Caja de Valores S.A., Argentina’s central securities depository — the institution that keeps the national record of who owns what — with a 99.96% stake. BYMA does not belong to a formal regional exchange group such as Latin America’s MILA alliance.
The CEO of BYMA is Gonzalo Pascual Merlo. Not published: the name of the current chair of the Board of Directors was not found on the exchange’s own investor-relations pages at byma.com.ar/en/investor-relations or in the bylaws document reviewed; the bylaws note that the Board comprises between 12 and 18 permanent directors elected for three-year terms.
Live Company Intelligencey Mercados Argentinos (): how it works, who runs it, and what issuers must disclose — the full investor dossier
Who regulates it
The regulatory body is the Comisión Nacional de Valores — Argentina’s national securities commission, abbreviated CNV — an autonomous government agency established by Law 17,811 in 1968 and now empowered primarily under Capital Markets Law No. 26,831, enacted on 28 December 2012. The CNV sits within the Ministry of Economy and is located at Julio A.
Roca 781, Buenos Aires. Its public portal, where all issuer filings live, is at cnv.gov.ar.
The CNV holds primary responsibility for authorising market participants; supervising trading, public offerings and securities listings; enforcing disclosure requirements; and imposing administrative sanctions for non-compliance. It oversees brokers, public companies, mutual funds, clearing houses, and is also the regulator for futures and options trading.
Argentine insurance companies are regulated by the separate National Superintendency of Insurance, while banks are regulated mainly by the Central Bank — neither falls under the CNV. The CNV can suspend a listing, compel disclosure, and fine market participants, but it cannot prosecute criminal conduct directly; criminal referrals go to the federal courts.
If a material event warrants it, BYMA can — with CNV co-ordination — immediately halt trading in a security and disseminate the relevant information, notifying the CNV simultaneously by e-mail.
What trades there
BYMA runs a single integrated electronic market for multiple asset classes. These include company shares; short-term collateralised money-market loans known locally as simultaneous operations (operaciones de pase), which are functionally similar to repos; options — contracts granting the right to buy or sell at a set price; futures — standardised contracts to exchange an asset at a future date and agreed price; investment funds; corporate bonds; and government bonds.
A distinctive product is the CEDEAR — Argentine Depositary Receipt — a security issued in Argentina that gives local and foreign investors access to shares of companies listed abroad, with each CEDEAR representing a fixed fraction of the underlying foreign share held in custody. Through CEDEARs, Argentine investors can buy shares in companies such as Apple, Google, or Netflix without opening an account with a foreign broker.
The main equity index is the S&P MERVAL, the result of a co-branding alliance between BYMA and S&P Dow Jones Indices, which assumed responsibility for calculating, licensing and distributing BYMA’s indices from 14 January 2019. The S&P MERVAL measures the performance of the largest, most liquid domestic stocks on BYMA; constituents must meet minimum size and liquidity requirements.
The index is composed of the 25 most liquid stocks listed. A broader gauge, the S&P/BYMA Argentina General Index, is a float-weighted index covering all domestic BYMA stocks that have traded on at least 20% of the trading days in the preceding twelve months.
Not published: the exact quarterly or semi-annual rebalancing schedule for constituent review was not found on BYMA’s own market pages; the S&P DJI methodology document states that rebalancings follow the S&P/BYMA Argentina General Index schedule. There is no separate junior or growth board for young companies comparable to AIM in London; the CNV operates a simplified regime for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but access under it is limited to qualified investors.
What it takes to list
The governing framework for any listing is Capital Markets Law No. 26,831 together with the general resolutions issued by the CNV; any proposed listing must comply with the registration requirements established by both. Argentine corporations, co-operatives, non-profit organisations and branches of foreign corporations can all issue securities, provided they satisfy the legal requirements of the Securities Law.
There is no mandatory minimum public float — that is, no rule specifying a minimum proportion of shares that must be held by outside investors — but in practice the CNV’s representatives agree the free float with the issuer during the pre-listing stage to ensure sufficient liquidity for trading. The CNV also imposes no minimum period of operating history and no required length of management continuity.
There are no corporate-governance conditions that a company must meet in order to qualify to list.
Companies wishing to make a public offering must pay the CNV an initial authorisation fee of 0.05% of the total amount issued. In addition, an annual audit fee payable to the CNV of ARS 2,805,000 (approximately US$2,000 at recent exchange rates) is required.
Annual fees are also payable to BYMA itself, calculated quarterly on a sliding scale based on the company’s paid-in capital, with a fixed component plus an incremental percentage for the amount above each band’s minimum. Not published: the precise minimum paid-in-capital threshold for equity listing admission was not found on BYMA’s own listing-rules pages or in CNV general resolutions reviewed; the law sets no single numerical floor that applies to all issuers.
What companies must tell you
Following an initial listing, companies making a public offering are required to submit financial and corporate documentation to the CNV on an annual basis. The CNV may additionally require companies to report material corporate developments — such as acquisitions, annual meetings, dividend declarations, or a change of business — and to submit documentation on a quarterly basis.
Annual accounts must be audited; the CNV requires all filings to be made in Spanish.
The CNV rules require that any transaction causing a person’s holdings of a registered Argentine company’s capital to equal or exceed 5% of the voting power must be immediately reported to the CNV; each subsequent change representing a further multiple of 5% must also be reported — what is known internationally as a major-shareholding disclosure threshold. Directors, senior managers, executive officers, supervisory committee members and controlling shareholders must notify the CNV monthly of their beneficial ownership of shares, debt securities and options in the company and in its affiliates.
What the rules do NOT demand is equally important to understand. The CNV does not require financial statements to be prepared under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in all cases — Argentine-listed companies may use local GAAP, which can differ materially from the standards used in Europe or the United States.
Foreign companies filing documents with the CNV must submit them with the relevant apostille or legalisation and with a sworn Spanish translation; this means that English-language disclosure is not the primary record. Not published: specific rules on mandatory disclosure of executive remuneration by individual director were not found in the CNV’s issuer-obligations pages or BYMA’s own procedures manual reviewed; Argentine law requires aggregate board compensation to be disclosed in the annual report, but individual director pay is not typically broken out in the publicly available filing.
How trading works
BYMA is open Monday to Friday, from 10:30 am to 5:00 pm. All times are Argentina Standard Time, which is GMT-3.
Argentina does not observe daylight saving time, so the offset from GMT never changes. That gives roughly 240 to 245 trading days per year, accounting for Argentine and some US public holidays published on BYMA’s official trading calendar.
BYMA’s trading system processes orders under a price-time priority principle — the best-priced order is filled first, and among orders at the same price, the earliest submitted is filled first. Orders are matched automatically through the electronic trading system (Sistema Electrónico de Negociación), and limit and market orders are supported.
A separate bilateral segment known as SENEBI (Sistema Electrónico de Negociación Bilateral) allows broker-dealers to agree trades directly with counterparties and then report them to BYMA for registration.
To control price swings, BYMA suspends trading in a security for 15 minutes when its price moves 10%–15% from the reference price; any further movement of 5% beyond that triggers successive 10-minute suspension periods. Trades executed in the SENEBI bilateral segment carry no settlement guarantee from BYMA and are not backed by its mandatory guarantee fund.
How a trade is settled
In its capacity as central counterparty (CCP) — the institution that stands in the middle of every guaranteed trade and becomes buyer to every seller and seller to every buyer — BYMA performs trade settlement, multilateral clearing and netting on behalf of each brokerage firm. BYMA’s trading and post-trade operations run on the Millennium platform, originally developed by the London Stock Exchange Group.
The standard settlement cycle for normal spot equity transactions was T+2 — two business days after the trade date — which was the international norm. BYMA has since moved to align with shorter global standards; the exchange’s own newsroom announced a reduction of this cycle, though the precise new cycle (T+1) should be confirmed directly with BYMA before trading, as implementation timelines can vary by instrument.
Debt and equity securities traded on BYMA must, unless shareholders instruct otherwise, be deposited with Caja de Valores S.A., Argentina’s central securities depository — the institution that acts as record-keeper, transfer agent and paying agent for all listed securities. CEDEARs are also held in custody at Caja de Valores under the same conditions as Argentine-listed stocks.
In practice, retail investors hold shares in their broker’s account as beneficial owners, with Caja de Valores maintaining the underlying register; direct personal registration at the depository level is possible but uncommon for retail investors.
Short selling, lending and margin
BYMA does not operate a liquid, standardised securities-lending or short-selling market comparable to those in the United States or Western Europe. The practical mechanisms — a regulated stock-borrowing and lending programme that would allow an investor to borrow shares in order to sell them short — are not in general operation for the broad market.
This matters enormously for foreign professionals: it means that expressing a negative view on an Argentine stock through a conventional short is largely unavailable, which in turn reduces the two-way price pressure that normally keeps valuations closer to fair value.
Short-term collateralised financing — lending money against listed securities as collateral, similar to a margin facility — is available through the simultaneous operations (operaciones de pase) market. Futures trading on BYMA requires both sides of the trade to post initial margin commensurate with the underlying asset.
Not published: a specific published BYMA or CNV rule explicitly prohibiting or regulating conventional equities short selling was not located in the exchange’s regulations pages or BYMA’s procedures manual reviewed; the absence of a functioning borrowing programme is the operative constraint rather than a formal statutory prohibition.
Can a foreigner buy here?
A non-resident can buy BYMA-listed securities. Argentine law places no legal limitations on foreign or non-resident shareholders owning securities or exercising voting rights.
The practical first step is to select an authorised local brokerage firm — known in Argentina as an ALYC, or Agente de Liquidación y Compensación — and open an account with it. The brokerage will require identification, anti-money-laundering documents, and — for tax-identification purposes — a CDI (Clave de Identificación) number, which the national tax authority ARCA issues to non-residents who do not hold the resident CUIT code.
Non-resident investors are in principle subject to capital gains tax on Argentine equities at an effective rate of 13.5% on gross proceeds, or alternatively 15% on actual capital gain if the tax cost basis can be documented; however, gains from equities listed on the local stock exchange and from ADRs and GDRs are tax-exempt provided certain conditions are met. Dividends paid by an Argentine company to a non-resident individual or entity are taxed at a 7% withholding tax rate, deducted at source before the dividend is remitted.
Repatriation of funds has historically been subject to Argentine foreign exchange controls, which have varied considerably over time and are governed by the Central Bank’s rules rather than by BYMA or the CNV. The easier route for most international investors is to buy the large Argentine companies through their American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the New York Stock Exchange or through the Global X MSCI Argentina ETF (ticker: ARGT), which trades in New York.
Both ADRs/GDRs and capital gains on government bonds meet the conditions for the tax exemption for foreign investors, and gains from corporate bonds placed by public offer are also generally exempt.
What it costs
The initial authorisation fee payable to the CNV when a company first makes a public offering is 0.05% of the total amount issued — so on a bond issue of ARS 1,000,000,000 (approximately US$710,000), the fee would be ARS 500,000 (approximately US$355). An annual audit fee of ARS 2,805,000 (approximately US$2,000) is also payable to the CNV each year.
Annual maintenance fees payable to BYMA are calculated quarterly using a sliding scale based on the issuer’s corporate capital, with a fixed component per band and an incremental percentage on the excess above each band’s floor. Not published: the specific fee table (the precise ARS amounts per capital band) was not found on BYMA’s publicly accessible fees and membership page (byma.com.ar/en/market/regulations) at the time of writing; Baker McKenzie’s cross-border listings guide references the formula structure but the underlying schedule is set by BYMA internally and updated periodically.
For trading, BYMA charges brokerage firms transaction fees on each trade. Not published: a publicly accessible schedule of per-trade charges (expressed as a basis-point rate on transaction value) was not found on BYMA’s fees page reviewed; these charges are typically passed through to end investors as part of the commission quoted by their local broker.
Argentina levies no separate stamp duty or financial transactions tax specifically on secondary market equity trades, though stamp taxes may apply in some Argentine provinces.
Where the prices are
BYMA provides market data through its own BYMADATA platform, though all content on the website — including asset prices, volumes and index values — is proprietary to BYMA. From BYMADATA, investors can access all trading data.
Real-time data is available through BYMA’s own data products and via licensed vendors; a free delayed feed is available to the public on the BYMA website.
ICE Data Services carries BYMA as a licensed data source, providing streaming data for equities, fixed income, futures, indices and options via the ICE Consolidated Feed, accessible through ICE Connect Desktop and ICE XL for spreadsheet integration. S&P Dow Jones Indices co-brands and publishes the family of BYMA indices, including the S&P MERVAL and S&P/BYMA Argentina General Index.
Bloomberg and Refinitiv (LSEG) carry BYMA-listed securities using the .BA suffix — the same suffix used by EODHD and other data vendors — so prices for the most liquid names are broadly accessible through the main commercial terminals. However, coverage thins rapidly below the top 20 or so stocks: small-cap Argentine equities often have sparse or absent price histories in international databases, which is one reason English-language analysis of Argentine companies outside the MERVAL leaders is so rare.
End-of-day closing prices in official daily bulletins are published by BYMA on its own site and via BYMADATA.
Liquidity, as we measure it
15 up · 37 down · 16 unchanged
Not published: 9 of the 77 companies we cover on this exchange returned no price on this session — they are listed but did not trade, or no vendor carries them. We profile them anyway.
Most traded that session
| Company | Ticker | Turnover | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| YPF S.A. D | YPFD | US$24.6m | +1.81% |
| Vista Energy S.A.B. de C.V. | VIST | US$12.8m | +4.83% |
| Grupo Financiero Galicia S.A. | GGAL | US$11.5m | -2.05% |
| Pampa Energia SA | PAMP | US$2.8m | +0.48% |
| BBVA Banco Frances SA | BBAR | US$2.4m | -3.50% |
Market data as of 8 July 2026. Refreshed nightly from the exchange's end-of-day feed; the text above is researched separately and carries its own verification date.
Sources
BYMA official website (byma.com.ar) — exchange homepage, product descriptions, market structure, trading calendar, BYMADATA market-data platform, settlement-cycle announcement, and CEDEARs product page. Primary source for exchange structure, products and CEO identity.
BYMA Investor Relations page (byma.com.ar/en/investor-relations) — confirms BYMA’s ownership of 99.96% of Caja de Valores, the Millennium platform, and BYMA’s creation under Law 26,831.
BYMA Bylaws (2018, byma.com.ar) — official bylaws approved by shareholders, establishing share capital structure, board composition, CCP guarantee rules, and prohibition on preferred shares.
BYMA Procedures Manual (byma.com.ar) — official procedures manual establishing trading system rules, price-time priority, SENEBI bilateral segment, settlement guarantee mechanics, and CNV notification procedures.
CNV — Comisión Nacional de Valores (cnv.gov.ar) — Argentina’s securities regulator; primary source for the regulatory framework, issuer-obligations pages, and the public filings portal (Autopista de Información Financiera).
Baker McKenzie Cross-Border Listings Guide — Buenos Aires Stock Exchange — practitioner guide to BYMA listing requirements, CNV fees, free float practice, corporate governance, and foreign issuer documentation requirements. Used to verify CNV fee figures and listing procedures.
FIAB Handbook — Bolsas y Mercados Argentinos (fiabnet.org) — Ibero-American Federation of Exchanges entry on BYMA, updated July 2023; confirms ownership structure, share capital, BYMA’s role as CCP, and Caja de Valores integration.
S&P Dow Jones Indices — S&P MERVAL Index (spglobal.com) — confirms MERVAL as BYMA’s flagship index, S&P DJI’s role as index calculator, and constituent eligibility criteria. Also reviewed the S&P/BYMA Indices Methodology (March 2026) for rebalancing and index-family details.
PwC Tax Summaries — Argentina Withholding Taxes (taxsummaries.pwc.com) — source for the 7% dividend withholding tax rate for non-residents and the capital gains exemption conditions for listed equities.
EDENOR Form 20-F (2020) filed with the US SEC — Argentine issuer’s annual report filed with the SEC; confirms BYMA’s authorisation dates, price-volatility circuit-breaker thresholds, Caja de Valores depository role, and CNV Resolution No. 18,629. Used as a cross-check on primary exchange and regulator sources.
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