Wall Street shares, still hovering near their cyclical highs, shed some of their recent gains on Monday (Dow Jones 0.1%, S&P 500 0.1%) as uncertainty over when the Federal Reserve (Fed) might begin to unwind its $85bn-a-month quantitative easing programme affected sentiment. The picture in Europe is mixed this morning; in early trading the FTSE 100 index was up 0.1% while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 shed 0.1%.