A jump in the price of bullion picked up Canadian markets Thursday morning, while U.S. markets showed signs of life after a sluggish start following the post-election euphoria on Wednesday.

At midday, the S&P/TSX composite was ahead by 21.42 points or 0.24% at 8862.77 and the TSX Venture Exchange advanced 13.73 points or 0.86% to 1618.29. In New York, the Dow Jones, which posted a triple-digit gain on Wednesday, was up 51.40 points or 0.51% at 10188.45. The Nasdaq was mostly unchanged at 2003.85 and the S&P 500 added 5.79 points or 0.51% at 1148.99.

The Canadian dollar continued to benefit from American dollar weakness, up 0.24 of a cent to US82.99¢ after trading earlier over the 83¢ level. The loonie hasn’t closed above US83¢ since early September 1992. The U.S. greenback suffered against other major currencies – hitting a nine-month low against the euro of US$1.288.

In Toronto, the gold sector was the strongest group as the price of bullion rose $6.40 to US$430.50 an ounce in New York. The gold group jumped 3.59% while the metals and materials sub-groups, both with strong gold mining components, were both up more than 2%. Kinross Gold was the TSX’s most active stock with more than 8.2 million shares trading hands; jumped 6.99%. Placer Dome was ahead 4.32%, also in heavy trading.

The TSX financial group helped boost the market, too. It was ahead 0.13%. Most of the other sub-groups were in the red Thursday morning.

The biggest decliner was the health care group, which fell 1.94%. It was led by Biovail Corp., which was down 8.25% despite reporting that its third-quarter profit tripled to US$49.6 million.

U.S. markets got a positive bit of news Thursday morning as U.S. claims for jobless benefits last week came in at 332,000, lower than the 340,000 that had been expected.

Markets also kept an eye on mixed retail sales in the U.S. for October. Discounters such as Wal-Mart were hit harder as low-income consumers worried about jobs and high gasoline prices and cut back their spending.

Wal-Mart rose 0.8% after it said its fiscal third quarter earnings would be at the high-end of its previously forecasted range, offsetting a sluggish October same-store sales performance.

Alcoa rose 1.5 percent after Canadian rival Alcan posted a 97% rise in third quarter profit. Alcan in Toornto was up 2.5%.

General Motors climbed 1.6%t, rebounding from a pullback in the prior session after the car maker reported a 5 percent drop in October sales.

On the negative side, Pfizer shares fell as much as 7.5% after Goldman Sachs analysts issued a note saying the company will have to do another year-long clinical study in order to be able to launch its blockbuster pain reliever drug Celebrex in Japan. The drug maker’s shares were last off 1.9%.

Boeing shed 1.8% on a broker downgrade due to commercial aircraft delivery concerns.

Overseas, Tokyo’s Nikkei Stock Average of 225 issues gained 58.46 points, or 0.5%, to end at 10,946.27. Japanese financial markets were closed Wednesday for a national holiday.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index fell 28.58 points, or 0.2%, to close at 13,369.09.

London’s FTSE 100 index was off 9.8 points at 4,708.7 while the Frankfurt DAX 30 lost 0.35% while the Paris CAC 40 gave up 0.43%.