Better buy rubble and other tiny rocks, they have more intrinsic value. You can use them for paving parts of your house's yard/garden.
I don't think it's that black and white. When the MSM pushes the same narrative and rhetoric, you can almost guarantee there's an agenda behind it.
I think you spoke too soon, Chip. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ruble-regains-100-its-loss-after-russia-invaded-ukraine-why The Ruble Regains 100% Of Its Loss After Russia Invaded Ukraine, Why? Because of a little old barbaric metal called GOLD! Is COMEX about to lose its paper price manipulation mechanism?
I stopped listening to self-referential "bedroom experts" who speak phantasmagoria in front of their web cam. No credibility. Worse than ZeroHedge. The countless blogs and self-referential "experts" quote each other and invite each other on interviews. Some of the information seems to come out of nowhere (invented?) and it's packaged as "the next big thing" (fake news?). But it's interesting indeed that the rouble has almost fully recovered (according to some other sources / mainstream media, by the way) due to the fact that they started selling gas and oil for roubles.
You think they have massive foreign reserves for them to bid up the Ruble to that amount? It looks more demand driven. People over reacted and the smart people purchased Ruble for dirt cheap. (Or another way to look at it, smart people were able to buy Russian resources dirt cheap) The power of FUD. Forget Korean FUD, the new one is Russian FUD.
I wouldn't have said it if I didn't think so. The 20% interest rate helps too, as well as the capital restrictions they've applied.
Published in the WSJ behind a paywall: https://businesshala.com/how-russias-central-bank-engineered-the-rubles-rebound/
Technically, so is the WSJ article partially "fake news". I'm not pro-Putin. He's just outsmarted the woke greentards in Europe and now reaps the benefits of their gullibility. Rouble is being supported by the flow of currencies - they still get in their coffers a billion euros a day from energy dependant EU countries (plus dollars, renminbi and rupiah). Russia does not have much external foreign currency debt and thanks to the gas&oil exports their current account is on surplus. Next, they can extend the payments in roubles policy to other goods, such as grain, urea etc. SWIFT was substituted in internal transactions by their MIR system already back in 2014 when MasterCard and Visa previously exited Russia due to the illegal Crimea annexation. As noted, interesting to see how this plays out. Their announcement says they'll continue the purchases with the fixed price until end of June. After that - will they reprice? (Standard disclaimer: Not financial advice. Avoid Russia at all cost for risk of getting sanctioned. Video below linked for entertainment purposes only, I'm not responsible for the content.)