New Delhi, Sept. 23 -- For British gold buyers, Monday's LBMA afternoon fix delivered a familiar picture. At £104.60 per gram, 24-carat gold slipped marginally from Friday's close, but the retreat is contained; the London benchmark remains within reach of its recent September high. What softened prices was not a collapse in demand but measured profit-taking ahead of Navratri, the eighteen-day Hindu festival that drives some of the year's largest retail gold purchases across India and among diaspora communities in London, Birmingham, and Leicester.

a scenario that typically pressures the dollar and supports gold in subsequent sessions.

The Navratri demand factor is not incidental to gold trading in Britain. South Asian communities r...