Gold holds weaker below $1285 level, downside seems limited ahead of FOMC minutes

   •  The prevalent risk-on mood continues to dent safe-haven status.
   •  Expectations of a dovish Fed/USD weakness helped limit downside.
   •  Focus remains on today’s release of the FOMC meeting minutes.

Gold struggled to build on the overnight attempted rebound from sub-$1280 level and traded with a mild negative bias for the second consecutive session on Wednesday.

The latest optimism over US-China trade talks continued undermining demand for traditional safe-haven assets and was seen as one of the key factors exerting some downward pressure on the precious metal.

However, speculations that the Fed is willing to pause its monetary policy tightening cycle in 2019, amid concerns over an economic slowdown, extended some support to the non-yielding yellow-metal.

This coupled with the prevalent US Dollar selling bias, which tends to benefit the dollar-denominated commodity, further collaborated towards limiting any meaningful downfall, at least for the time being.

Hence, the key focus will remain on today's release of the FOMC meeting minutes, which coupled with the Fed Chair Jerome Powell's scheduled speech on Thursday, will be looked upon for a fresh directional impetus.

Technical levels to watch

The $1280 area might continue to protect the immediate downside, which if broken decisively might prompt some aggressive long-unwinding trade and accelerate the slide further towards $1269-68 support area. 

On the flip side, any meaningful up-move is likely to confront immediate resistance near the $1289-90 region and is followed by the $1295 supply zone, above which the commodity seems all set to reclaim the $1300 mark.