NYSE hit by early glitch in trading

NEW YORK – A trading glitch led to some puzzling stock movements on Wall Street, prompting the New York Stock Exchange to cancel some morning trades in six companies’ shares.

The exchange found “irregular trading” in 148 stocks shortly after the opening bell Wednesday – problems apparently stemming from a technology issue at New Jersey brokerage Knight Capital Group.

After conducting a review, the exchange’s operator, NYSE Euronext, identified six stocks whose trades “will be busted” if executed at 30 percent or more above or below their opening prices.

Wednesday’s market trouble called to mind automated trading issues that contributed to the “flash crash” of 2010, when $1 trillion briefly vanished from the stock market.

Knight Capital Group, a major Wall Street brokerage firm, said it had identified problems with routing trades in about 150 stocks Wednesday.

Ford, GM sales lose ground to Japan rivals

DETROIT – General Motors and Ford lost ground to Japanese automakers last month as their rivals made a strong comeback from last year’s earthquake.

GM’s July sales fell 6 percent from a year earlier, while Ford’s slipped 4 percent. By contrast, Toyota posted a 26-percent jump and Nissan’s sales rose 16 percent. Chrysler also did well, notching its best July in five years.

Industrywide sales are expected to rise 11 percent, when the final numbers come in Wednesday, boosted by summer clearance deals and low-cost financing. The Japanese are seeing the biggest sales gains from a year earlier, when they couldn’t supply enough models to U.S showrooms after production was hobbled by a March earthquake.

Construction spending continues to increase

WASHINGTON – Another strong gain in homebuilding pushed U.S. construction spending up for a third straight month in June.

The construction industry has been flashing signs of improvement while other sectors of the economy have slowed.

Construction spending rose 0.4 percent in June following an upwardly revised 1.6 percent gain in May that was the biggest one-month increase since December, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.

The June advance pushed spending to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $842.1 billion, up 12.9 percent from a 12-year low hit in February 2011. Still, the level is roughly half of what economists consider to be healthy.

For June, the strength came from a 1.3 percent increase in spending on housing, the fifth gain this year.