Stanley Druckenmiller Invested Tens of Millions Into These Risky Stocks. Should You?

In the first quarter of 2026, Stanley Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office expanded its stake in YPF (NYSE: YPF), Argentina's state-controlled oil company, more than fivefold to 3,235,962 shares, and at the same time, it bought back into the Global X MSCI Argentina ETF (NYSEMKT: ARGT), an exchange-traded fund (ETF) holding the shares of the largest and most successful public Argentine companies. Then, just a few months later, he trimmed his holdings of both.

As of June 30, Duquesne reported that it held $142.7 million of YPF, $30 million of the fund, and, in a fresh bet on assets in the country, a new $3 million position in Grupo Financiero Galicia (NASDAQ: GGAL), an Argentine bank holding company; the fund also holds $8.6 million in another Argentine energy company. In total, Argentine shares held in the portfolio were worth $184.3 million, 3.5% of Duquesne's reported portfolio value. So what opportunity is Stanley Druckenmiller seeing in Argentina, and is it worth following him into these positions, given how risky stand-alone and frontier market stocks almost always are?

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Oil profits are only part of the story here

Druckenmiller's investment in YPF was just in time to see a major windfall.

The company reported earnings of $1.21 billion in the second quarter, up massively from $58 million a year earlier. The growth stems from the shale formation called Vaca Muerta in Patagonia, where its oil output reached 212,700 barrels per day in that quarter, up 47% from a year earlier.

Moving those barrels to buyers has been the main constraint to selling even larger volumes, which could ease soon. The Vaca Muerta Sur export pipeline was 80% built as of July, with the first oil flows due to occur in early 2027. If that pipeline opens up, it'll mean that YPF can sell a larger share of its output at international prices to buyers abroad, garnering what could well be another large windfall if oil prices continue to rise due to the war affecting the Strait of Hormuz.

Druckenmiller's new stake in Galicia is on less certain ground.

Its profit rose by 12% in Q2, but its nonperforming loan ratio, which refers to the share of loans not being repaid on time , reached 10.6%, up from 5.5% a year earlier. Buying it means that Druckenmiller is effectively betting that the bank's Argentine borrowers will start paying their loans again as the country's inflation cools further relative to its prior highs above 100% per year.