SECURITIES

Record Levels of Stock, Bonds Issued: Wall Street shattered its annual underwriting record in the first nine months of the year, as corporate America took advantage of sinking interest rates to issue $667 billion in new stock and bonds. Securities Data Co., a Wall Street research firm, said domestic new issues of stock and bonds were $77 billion higher through September than in all of 1991. Of the $56.8 billion in common stock raised in the first nine months, $30 billion has been through initial public offerings, or IPOs, which represent a company’s first sale of stock to the public. The value of the IPOs broke the previous 12-month record of $26.8 billion in 1987, according to Securities Data. But of 90 IPOs issued in the last three months, nearly half were sold to investors at prices below initial expectations, indicating that the market may be slowing.