User: Hokie: Hokie's Stock Market Articles: NYSE to Cancel Trades in 6 Stocks Affected by Glitch - US  Business News - CNBC

The New York Stock Exchange announced plans on Wednesday to cancel trades in six stocks that were affected by trading glitches stemming from Knight Capital Group's market-making unit earlier in the day.

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Only five of the six stocks have been named so far. The affected companies include: Wizzard Software [WZE  Loading...      ()   ], Quicksilver [KWK  Loading...      ()   ], E House [EJ  Loading...      ()   ], American Reprographics [ARC  Loading...      ()   ] and China Cord Blood [CO  Loading...      ()   ].

Electronic trading firm Knight Capital Group said Wednesday that a "technology issue'' in its market-making unit had affected the routing of shares of about 150 stocks to the New York Stock Exchange, where abnormal volatility roiled the markets in early trading.

Earlier, Knight said in a statement that it had notified its market-making clients this morning to route NYSE-listed orders to other venues.

The company said over-the-counter securities and trading in its other businesses were not affected.

Shares of Knight [KCG  Loading...      ()   ], which said it continued to review the matter, were down sharply in afternoon trading.

Heavy computer-based trading at the market open caused several stocks to be halted and prompted reviews on trades in scores more. New York Stock Exchange operator NYSE Euronext said it had experienced no systems issues.

(Read More: How High-Frequency Trading Happens)

The broader market was little changed, but the trading glitch quickly became the focus for traders.

Several market participants said the source of the problem may have been large orders meant to be filled throughout the day that were instead executed in a shorter time frame, with some saying it was handled in the first 15 minutes of trading.

"That has disrupted all the normal activities — stocks are moving all over the place, they are weird, they are trading like millions of shares, 100 shares at a time, so something went haywire somewhere,'' said Stephen Massocca, managing director, Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"It appears to be dozens if not hundreds of stocks that have (seen) extremely high volume and extremely rapid movement,'' said Joe Saluzzi, co-manager of trading at Themis Trading in Chatham, New Jersey.

The volatility caused pauses in other stocks, including: Corelogic [CLGX  Loading...      ()   ], Kronos Worldwide [KRO  Loading...      ()   ], Trinity Industries [TRN  Loading...      ()   ] and Molycorp [MCP  Loading...      ()   ].

(Read More: The Rise of High-Frequency Trading.)

Trading in those names was much heavier than normal: Molycorp traded more than 5.7 million shares in the first 45 minutes of trading. The stock usually averages about 2.65 million shares daily, and it was one of the stocks halted due to excessive volatility.

Unusual volume was seen in a disparate group of stocks, including Lithia Motors [LAD  Loading...      ()   ], where more than 4.3 million shares had already changed hands. The stock usually trades about 95,000 shares daily.

Among other stocks, Protective Life [PL  Loading...      ()   ] had already traded more than 10 times its usual volume, and Juniper Networks [JNPR  Loading...      ()   ] has already seen six times its usual daily volume.