Jersey City - Knight Capital Group said it had removed the software that led to erroneous orders and wild trading on Wall Street this week and forecast a pretax loss of about $440 million as a result of the glitch.

But Knight said its clients were not hurt by the orders and added that its broker/dealer subsidiaries were in compliance with capital requirements despite the losses. It said it is looking to strengthen its capital base.

After losing a third of their value on Wednesday, Knight shares were down another 50 percent by late morning in New York trade.

Knight said the the glitch was related to the installation of trading software and caused numerous erroneous orders in NYSE-listed securities to be sent into the market. The problem led to the market being flooded with buy and sell orders during the first half hour of trading on Wednesday.

"This software has been removed from the company's systems," Knight said in a statement. "Clients were not negatively affected by the erroneous orders, and the software issue was limited to the routing of certain listed stocks to NYSE."

The company said it had traded out of its entire erroneous trade position, which resulted in the losses.

"Although the company's capital base has been severely impacted, the company's broker/dealer subsidiaries are in full compliance with their net capital requirements," Knight said.

"Knight will continue its trading and market making activities at the commencement of trading today. The company is actively pursuing its strategic and financing alternatives to strengthen its capital base."