If you follow precious metals news, you might have seen a recent article reporting that Russia sold a big chunk of its gold reserves. The article has since been corrected, but it just goes to show how sloppy Western journalism can be, especially when it comes to the reality of physical gold investment.

Laurynas Vegys of Casey Research has published a new article exposing this poor reporting. He goes on to dig deeper into the extremely bullish actions of Russia, which appears to prefer gold over the US dollar.

What we're seeing here is not some haphazard pattern of purchases. Quite the contrary, this is a trend that has been in motion for quite a while, right under the noses of indebted Western governments and against the backdrop of unprecedented rounds of money printing by the world's major central banks. This trend has taken Russia's gold holdings from around 400 tonnes 13 years ago to what is fast approaching 1,200 tonnes at the end of 2014. Russian reserves currently represent the world's sixth-largest hoard of the yellow metal.

“What should also jump out of the chart above is that the 150 tonnes bought year to date is above any amounts of gold acquired in previous years—significantly so.

“In the end, Russia has been well ahead of other countries in the gold-buying department for quite some time, so it's hardly a surprise that it's become a heavyweight gold champion among central banks worldwide this year. Gold now makes up 10.8% of Russia's total reserves, and a whopping 18.4% of its M1 monetary supply—both unparalleled in the Western world.”

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