How to profit from Argentina’s seizure of oil company YPF

Argentina's latest populist move is to nationalise the oil company YPF. John Stepek explains what's going on, and how you can profit as states increasingly make a grab for natural resources.

You have to feel sorry for leaders of banana republics these days - developed world governments have stolen all their best tricks.

Britain, America, Europe and Japan are all printing money; you've got capital controls in the form of limits on cash transactions in various parts of Europe; and capital controls by the back door in the US, in the form of draconian legislation that makes it pointlessly risky for overseas financial companies to accept American clients.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.