Festive spirit adds sparkle to gold, hits 7-week high

Maintaining its strong upsurge, gold prices shot-up to a seven-week high at the domestic bullion market here today on frantic offtake by stockists and jewellery traders amid highly buoyant overseas sentiment.
Anticipation of robust demand ahead of the upcoming festive and wedding season, predominantly triggered the upmove, a bullion trader commented.
Elsewhere, silver also surged ahead following heavy speculative buying spree.
Standard gold (99.5 purity) jumped by Rs 270 to end at Rs 26,965 per 10 grams from Wednesday's close of Rs 26,695.
Pure gold (99.9 purity) also spurted by a similar margin to finish at Rs 27,115 per 10 grams against Rs 26,845 earlier.

Silver (.999 fineness) zoomed by Rs 460 to conclude at Rs 37,850 per kg compared to Rs 37,390 yesterday.
In worldwide trade, the shiny metal retreated modestly on the back of profit-taking as well as sharp recovery in global equity markets, despite overnight disappointing US retail sales report.
Spot was lower at USD 1,177.60 an ounce in early European trade and silver quoted little soft at USD 15.97 an ounce.