[ By Howard Haykin ] The Nasdaq Stock Market proposes a rule change to establish various "Benchmark Orders" under Nasdaq Rule 4751(f), for use in trading cash equities.  The Benchmark Order will offer members the ability to enter a single order in a single security seeking to match the performance of a selected benchmark over a pre-determined period of time. Such an order will provide entering firms additional tools to manage large trades, including potentially reducing price impact from such large trades.  These orders also will assist entering firms by increasing flexibility to manage their trading interest intraday. To further assist members, Nasdaq will provide those entering Benchmark Orders with detailed analytics with which to measure the performance of Benchmark Orders vis à vis the relevant benchmarks. The Benchmark Order will not itself be available for execution, but instead will be used by a sub-system of the trading system to generate a series of "Child Orders" of the types that already exist in the current Nasdaq rules.  The Child Orders of a Benchmark Order may be executed within the Nasdaq system under Nasdaq’s existing processing rules, or made available for routing under Nasdaq’s current routing rules.  All Child Orders of Benchmark Orders will comport with Nasdaq’s existing rules, including (for example) rules designed to enforce compliance with Regulation NMS and the SEC Market Access Rule. For further details, go to:  [ Nasdaq RULE FILING 12-59, 5/1/12].