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Early in the week our mates in the G7 countries “banned” buying Russian gold. In other words, Russia can mine its gold all it wants, but G7 members are forbidden from purchasing it.

This must be the most useless government ban, in the history of government bans. Given that there are a lot of governments around the world that choose not to follow NATO (or other widely recognised groupings of Western nations) in imposing sanctions, this symbolic gesture from the G7 is hollow.

Expect Russian gold to turn up in China, India and even the United Arab Emirates as these are major gold buyers. What I should have mentioned in the video, is that once gold is melted down and recast, it’s impossible to tell where it even originated.

Given gold’s portability (which is a reason why we like it) it’s not hard for Russian gold to leak into the G7 member countries… but let’s not go ruining the politicians’ good PR stunt with facts.

At the end, I cover the gold and silver ratio, and why you should keep an eye on miners’ half-year results.

Also, it appears I’ve been caught out. In the video I mention that I’ve written why I don’t think the gold-to-silver ratio will revert to the long-term average, but… it appears I haven’t. Whoops!

I’ll be sure to write about that next week.