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Gold fell on Thursday for the first time after rising in the previous two sessions, as investors cashed in recent gains and a recovery in the dollar added to the metal's current volatility.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback's value against a basket of major currencies, rose on Thursday after touching a near one-week low of 95.442 on Wednesday. It last traded at 95.714, up nearly 0.1 percent.

"It is difficult to get a clear handle on the short-term direction of gold, as the complex seems to be teeing off on dollar weakness and what seems to us to be general complacency about the central banks being reluctant to take hawkish action on the rate front," INTL FCStone analyst Edward Meir said in a note.

"However, strong U.S. macro numbers or rebounding equities could change this calculus, since they raise the spectre of higher rates and alternative investments with potentially better returns."

Investment gold demand during the first half of the year, which drove prices up 25% on the year, was the strongest seen in more than30 years, according to the World Gold Council’s second quarter Gold Demand Trends.

In its report released Thursday, the WGC noted that the investment market was driven by historical demand in exchange-traded products. The association noted that global ETF demand in the first half of 2016 totaled 579 tonnes, and almost matched 645 tonnes of ETF inflows seen for the entire year of 2009.

Total gold demand from April to June increased to 1,050.20 tonnes, up 15% compared to 910.4 total demand seen in the second quarter of 2015.

In an interview with Kitco News, Juan Carlos Artigas, director of investment research at the WGC, said that investors jumped into gold, reacting in part because of growing global negative yielding bond markets and growing geopolitical uncertainty.

He added that these factors will continue to support the gold market in the long-term.

“Negative interest rates and loose monetary policy in general has created a structural shift that will have a lasting impact on gold,” he said.

Investor demand is expected to grow as the report didn’t take into account the affect effects of the U.K. referendum on whether or not to leave the European Union. Since the Brexit vote gold prices have rallied even further, hitting new two-year highs.

“In the seven days after the vote, the search index for the keyword “Gold” compiled by China’s search engine Baidu surged 44%year-on-year. And on the very day of the referendum, the index increase threefold. Similarly, Google Trends reported a more-than500% spike in searches for the term ‘buy gold’ on the day of the referendum,” the council said.

Reference: KITCO, World Gold Council, Reuters