Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sent waves of erroneous orders into the stock-options market on Tuesday morning, the latest technical glitch to roil market prices and bedevil traders and regulators.

The orders, placed for options on stocks and exchange-traded funds with ticker symbols beginning with the letters I through K, drove some prices sharply lower. U.S. options exchanges notified traders on Tuesday that officials were reviewing the trades and might cancel some.

Still, Goldman's potential losses on the mishap could run into hundreds of millions of dollars, according to people familiar with the matter.

'The exchanges are working to resolve the issue,' a Goldman spokesman said in a statement. 'Neither the risk nor the potential loss is material to the financial condition of the firm.'

The trading error highlights the mounting risks of global financial markets that increasingly are being driven by computers rather than people. A series of mishaps since the 'flash crash' of 2010, which sent stocks and exchange-traded funds plummeting in minutes, have undermined confidence in market systems around the world.

Goldman traced the false orders to changes made Monday to an internal software program that helps determine the prices at which the firm would buy or sell options from clients, say people familiar with the matter. The systemmistakenly issued orders based on that data, but at a default price that in some cases was far below market rates. Goldman fixed the issue and is studying what went wrong, one person said.

The snafu pushed some options prices to $1 on Tuesday morning, prompting marketplaces including Nasdaq NDAQ +1.43% OMX Group Inc.'s Nasdaq Options Market, NYSE NYX +0.64% Euronext's NYSE Amex and CBOE Holdings Inc.'s Chicago Board Options Exchange CBOE +0.84% to alert traders to the problem and warn them that some trades placed between 9:30 a.m. and 9:47 a.m. New York time likely would be canceled.

Goldman has notified its regulators of the mishap, according to people close to the matter.

'As is our practice, we have been monitoring developments and talking with the exchanges and other market participants as appropriate,' said Securities and Exchange Commission spokesman John Nester.

People familiar with the matter said Goldman's total losses could range from several million dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on how many trades the exchanges allow to stand. Firms also can reach deals with counterparties on errant trades that reduce their potential losses. In its notice, NYSE officials said they 'anticipate that most of the impacted trades will be busted,' or canceled.

The episode is the latest in a series of market mishaps arising from technology designed to make markets more efficient.

The CBOE suffered a system outage on April 25 that forced it to delay the open of trading for more than three hours.

In February 2012, a rogue trading program flooded the U.S. options market with about 30,000 erroneous trades, requiring exchange officials to cancel some transactions and adjust others.

Nasdaq's problems during the May 2012 initial public offering of Facebook Inc. FB +1.59% contributed to an estimated $500 million in losses for Wall Street firms trying to buy and sell the stock. Earlier in 2012, electronic-exchange operator BATS Global Markets Inc. canceled its own IPO after a software bug forced the exchange to suspend trading in the shares.