London — Gold fell on Friday after a European Central Bank (ECB) official called for scaling back the bank’s stimulus programme, although losses were capped when weaker than expected US economic data raised questions about further rate hikes. ECB board member Sabine Lautenschläger made the most explicit call so far from an ECB policy maker for paring the bank’s ¤2.3-trillion money-printing programme. Data showing that eurozone wages grew at their fastest rate in two years in the second quarter bolstered the case for reining in ECB stimulus. "For gold this is bad news because this continues the trend of the market pricing in the normalisation of monetary policy," said Jens Pedersen, senior analyst at Danske Bank in Copenhagen. But he said there had already been plenty of headlines about the ECB planning an exit from its bond-buying and the US Federal Reserve reducing its balance sheet after its big quantitative easing programme. "It’s difficult to see gold really falling much further...
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