Gold surrenders early tepid gains, back closer to over 1-week lows

Gold reversed an early uptick to $1288 area and is now headed back to over one-week lows touched in the previous session.

A consolidative price action around equity markets failed to boost demand for traditional safe-haven assets and did little to help the precious metal to build on early up-mover. 

Meanwhile, Tuesday's better-than-expected US economic data underpinned the US Dollar and was also seen keeping a lid on dollar-denominated commodities - like gold. 

Adding to this, speculation that the US President Donald Trump could nominate a policy hawk to lead the US Federal Reserve now seems to have prompted some fresh selling around the non-yielding metal.

It would now be interesting to see if the commodity is able to find some buying interest near $1282-80 support area or extend this week's sharp reversal slide from three-week tops as investors look forward to speeches by influential FOMC members - New York Fed President William Dudley and Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan.

Technical levels to watch

On a sustained weakness below $1282-80 zone, the metal is likely to accelerate the fall towards 100-day SMA near the $1275 region ahead of $1267 strong horizontal support. 

Conversely, any recovery attempts might continue to confront fresh supply near the $1288-90 region, above which a bout of short-covering could lift the commodity back towards the key $1300 psychological mark.