Gold halts post-Fed sell-off, stages a minor recovery

Having dropped to a fresh 10-month low in the previous session, Gold staged a minor recovery on Friday and is currently trading around $1133-34 region.

A mild greenback pull-back is seen lending some support for the metal's recovery on the last trading day of the week. On Thursday, hawkish Fed statement continued boosting the greenback, pushing the overall US Dollar Index to its highest levels in more than 13 years, and weighed heavily on dollar-denominated commodities - like gold. Moreover, the policymakers now projected three rate-hikes in 2017, from two-hikes forecasted previously in September, which further dented demand for non-yielding precious metal. Adding to this, record surge in US equity markets did little to lend support to traditional safe-haven assets and dragged the yellow metal to its lowest level since early Feb. 

Moving ahead, growing expectations of stronger US economic growth, led by President-elect Donald Trump's proposed aggressive fiscal policies, might continue fueling speculations of faster pace of Fed rate-hike action and underpin the greenback, eventually restricting any swift recovery for the yellow metal.

Technical levels to watch

From current levels, $1138-40 zone is likely to act as immediate hurdle, above which the metal seems to witness a short-covering bounce initially towards $1150 intermediate resistance en-route $1158-60 strong horizontal resistance. On the downside, renewed weakness back below $1130, leading to a subsequent break below Thursday's multi-month lows support near $1122 level, is likely to accelerate the slide immediately towards $1110 before the commodity eventually drops to test $1100 psychological mark.