Gold retreats farther from yesterday's 11-week tops

   •  Hawkish FOMC meeting minutes prompts some fresh selling on Wednesday. 
   •  Easing Syria conflict/modest USD rebound adds to the downward pressure.

Gold traded with a mild negative bias through the Asian session on Thursday and retreated farther from 11-week tops touched yesterday.

The latest hawkish FOMC meeting minutes, revealing that all policymakers supported a rate hike and expect inflation to rise in the coming months, prompted the initial leg of retracement slide during the NY trading session on Wednesday.

Adding to this, easing geopolitical tensions, after the US President Donald Trump reportedly did not settle on plan with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, further weighed on the precious metal's safe-haven appeal. This coupled with a modest US Dollar uptick exerted some additional downward pressure on dollar-denominated commodities - like gold. 

Further downside below $1350 level remained limited amid weaker tone around the US Treasury bond yields, which tends to underpin demand for the non-yielding yellow metal. Hence, it would be prudent to wait for a strong follow-through selling in order to confirm that the commodity might have topped out in the near-term.

From a technical perspective, overnight retracement from YTD highs and the commodity's inability to close above $1353 level clearly indicates heavy supply at higher levels. Hence, traders are likely to wait for a decisive break through the mentioned hurdles before positioning for any additional near-term gains.

Technical levels to watch

A follow-through retracement slide could get extended towards $1340 horizontal support, which if broken might prompt some fresh selling and continue dragging the commodity further towards $1333-32 support area.

On the upside, $1353 area might continue to act as an immediate hurdle, above which the metal is likely to make a fresh attempt towards clearing the $1365-65 heavy supply zone.