Why is Putin buying gold?

Russian President Vladimir Putin is developing a taste for gold.

With all of its income from selling oil, Russia is diversifying its reserves by buying massive amounts of gold, said William Rhind, CEO of the World Gold Trust Services.

Of all the central banks that make their reserve actions public, Russia has been the “largest, most active” gold accumulator, he explained. Still, Rhind said, the “elephant in the room” is how much gold China is buying, as Beijing does not publish these figures.

Fears of triple-dip eurozone recession as Germany cuts growth forecasts

Anti-austerity movement gains confidence as largest economy suffers from falling industrial output and geopolitical crises

Germany has slashed its growth forecasts for this year and 2015, sparking calls for a public spending boost to prevent the eurozone falling into a triple-dip recession.

Berlin now expects growth of just 1.2% this year and the same in 2015, it said on Tuesday, down from 1.8% and 2%, in the face of slowing export growth.

It came as official Eurostat figures showed that industrial production across the eurozone slumped in August by an alarming 1.8% month-on-month, meaning it was 1.9% lower than a year ago.

How to Prepare Your Portfolio for Geopolitical Turmoil

Although both items need to be constantly looked at (50/50), the fundamental data lately is seemingly overriding the technical data. Observing geopolitics on a regular basis shows you the big picture where you can use inductive reasoning to hammer out the specifics in planning your future, be it from an investment standpoint or personal.

Had anyone asked back in January what kind of risks you thought might be giving financial markets a jolt by mid-year, odds are that you would have talked about the Federal Reserve’s intentions with respect to quantitative easing, the outlook for economic growth and whether S&P 500 companies are delivering the kind of earnings that analysts had been expecting.

Perhaps, given recent history, you might have thrown out an additional concern: That some unforeseen event in Spain or Italy might buffet the Eurozone and spill over into North American markets—after all, that has become an almost routine summertime occurrence.