Gold struggling to register any meaningful recovery

Gold prices rose for the second consecutive day on Wednesday and extended its tepid recovery bounce from near 8-week lows touched at the beginning of this week.

Currently trading around $1226 region, off session highs touched during early Asian session, the precious metal continues to benefit from safe-haven demand amid growing geopolitical tensions between the US and N. Korea. Adding to this, a softer tone around the US Dollar, led by a modest retracement in the US Treasury bond yields, provided an additional boost to the dollar-denominated commodity - gold. 

The yellow metal, however, has failed to register any meaningful recovery in wake of the recent hawkish tilt from major central banks, including the Fed, ECB, BoE and BoC. Possibilities of tighter monetary policy stance have been driving global bond yields higher and kept a lid on the non-yielding yellow metal's recovery move.

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Hence, investors would closely scrutinize today's FOMC meeting minutes in order to evaluate possibilities and timing of the next Fed rate hike action, which would eventually provide some fresh impetus for the commodity's near-term trajectory.

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Technical levels to watch

Any meaningful recovery from current levels is likely to confront immediate strong resistance at the very important 200-day SMA near $1233-35 area, above which a fresh bout of short-covering could lift the metal towards $1242 intermediate resistance en-route 100-day SMA hurdle near $1249-50 region. 

On the flip side, $1220 level remains an immediate support to defend, which if broken would turn the commodity vulnerable to head back towards testing the $1200 round figure mark with some intermediate support near $1207-05 zone.