
Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal? - sreenadh
From what I understand so far, it&#x27;s just a portal that gives the news. What I don&#x27;t get is why have a custom monitor, keyboard? I am not sure how is the network connected, is it a VPN. The cost of the product is ridiculous. I do not understand why are people paying for it. Is there a cheaper alternative that does not require specialised hardware? I know Bloomberg is a politician, has he managed to pass some ridiculous law that forces everyone to pay for his product?<p>P.S.: I do not understand Finance or the wall street world. But I am curious to know about the tech they use and why they are paying a huge amount for it.
======
hazard
It brings together a vast variety of otherwise extremely hard to find
information. The keyboard is specialized because it literally reduces the
number of keystrokes required to quickly access financial information. This is
a business where seconds matter - even when you have humans talking to other
humans to negotiate trades.

Literally almost every piece of useful financial information is available via
bloomberg. And I don't mean relatively basic info like "What's the current
yield the Apple 3.85% of 2043?" or "What's the current CDS spread for
Citibank?" that you can easily google for but also stuff like "Which oil
tankers are in for repair right now, and what are their capacities?" and
similar info on power plants, international agriculture, equities, interest
rates, etc.

Experienced bloomberg users have their most-used keystrokes in their muscle
memory. Less experienced users can hit F1 twice and immediately be connected
to a live bloomberg rep who will research your question for you (although it
may take 20 minutes for them to figure it out).

Bloomberg Chat is also extremely important, as others have mentioned.

~~~
zimablue
This is hyperbole, I've worked on dev side in finance a while now and
bloomberg data is often unreliable, everywhere I've worked people have built
layers on top of it, checking vs other sources and fat fingers. Also I'm
actually currently working for some oil guys and they use bloomberg for some
things but use specialist providers for oil macro, shipping and refinery
events. I'd say their main advantages are familiarity and some information
oligopolies

~~~
gist
> This is hyperbole

What I love about HN. I read one thing that sounds great and authoritative in
a subject that I know nothing about. Just to have someone else rain on the
parade! Which point of view is correct? I don't know (so I upvoted both..)

~~~
bbcbasic
> sounds great and authoritative

"sounds" being the operative word. Lots of ... lets say 'articulate' people on
HN, in general. Current thread excepted.

------
nostrademons
I think most of your questions can be answered by realizing that Bloomberg was
founded in 1981, and they basically got a monopoly in financial data provision
because _there were no other options in 1981_. That is why they have a custom
monitor & keyboard: in the days before the IBM PC, _everyone_ had a custom
monitor & keyboard, because these things were not standardized. Bloomberg was
a technologist & businessman before he was a politician; his business success
gave him the money to run for office, his office doesn't force people to pay
for Bloomberg.

The reason they're _still_ a monopoly is because knowing how to navigate a
Bloomberg is a critical skill for most finance professionals, and now that
they have that skillset, they can be very productive moving around in it. A
different (better?) UI would require they re-learn everything, which is not
going to happen. And when financial professionals are making half a million a
year, paying $24k/year for a terminal so that they can be productive isn't a
bad investment.

(Source: have a couple friends at Bloomberg. One is in their UI department,
and keeps having his proposals for better UIs shot down for business reasons.
Also married a financial professional who had to use a Bloomberg in her days
as a bond trader.)

~~~
pmiller2
They're a total 80's icon, too. If you see a movie set in the early 80's and
there's a computer-ish thing on someone's desk, it's most likely a Bloomberg
terminal.

~~~
akhilcacharya
The movie "Wall Street" is littered with them.

~~~
JackFr
Not sure if you mean the new "Wall Street" (which I haven't seen), but in the
old one, those are Quotrons, not Bloombergs. Bloombergs have always been
orange-on-black not green or white.

Way back when, only bond traders used Bloombergs. Equity and FX guys used
other things (Quotron, Reuters, maybe?)

~~~
akhilcacharya
Oh dear, my mistake.

------
charles-salvia
The best way to think about the Bloomberg terminal is a web browser that
connects you to a private network. (Bloomberg actually is the largest known
private network.) Once connected, you have access to thousands of "web apps"
\- which Bloomberg users call "functions". Instead of a URL, you use a short 2
to 5 letter mnemonic code for each function, such as "MSG" for email, or "TOP"
for top news. These different functions provide all sorts of various
functionality - most of them are of course related to financial information.
Functions like "CDSW" are for analyzing credit default swaps, "SDLC" gives you
supply chain data for different companies, other functions analyze or curate
Twitter, others correlate news events with historical stock data, etc. There
are also many non-financial functions as well that reflect the "social
network" aspect of the Bloomberg terminal, such as "POSH" which is basically a
high-end Craigs list, or "DINE" which is a high-end Yelp.

All-in-all, the Bloomberg Terminal is like a private Internet for financial
professionals.

~~~
praptak
Your remark about Bloomberg being the largest private network is interesting.
By what measure it is the largest (#people, #machines, miles of links?) and
which ones count as private?

~~~
venning
SIPRNet is probably an order of magnitude larger with over four million users
[1]. Even more impressive considering it isn't connected to the Internet.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIPRNet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIPRNet)

~~~
closeparen
I wonder what exactly "isn't connected to the internet" means. Every time we
build a military installation, we lay a dedicated cable from its nearest
neighbor? That can't be right.

Maybe it's mostly using satellite connections?

Seems like there'd be many times (particularly in the US) where tunneling an
encrypted connection over a civilian ISP would be worlds better than the next
best option. Maybe not even at the IP level, but a dedicated wavelength on
some existing AT&T fibre, for example.

~~~
tinalumfoil
Seems like they have their own network of satellites and terrestrial wires,
with less secure stuff going through the internet. This is interesting enough
to me that I'd research further but the amount of jargon and acronyms has
turned me away.

> Provide DISN-provided transport and information services used for > data,
> voice, video, and cross domain __through a combination of terrestrial, >
> aerial, satellite assets, and services IAW DODD 5105.19 (reference c) __. >
> Transport services include information transfer services between CC/S/A >
> installations, facilities, and enclaves, for connections to external mission
> > partner and defense contractor ISs and networks, and wide area network >
> information transfer.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20120914011329/http://www.dtic.mi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120914011329/http://www.dtic.mil/cjcs_directives/cdata/unlimit/6211_02.pdf)

------
brentis
It's a good question. There are many reasons - and I don't think the speed of
information is the real one. I almost left a single word response - "chat" \-
but think it is more complicated.

Another aspect is trust. If you are trading billions you want the
information/trade data "currency" everyone else uses. I built backends
converting MBS bid to yield and if it wasn't tuned to a 1/16 or better of
Bloomberg, it wasn't usable.

Bloomberg also offers custom studies like "fear/greed" which may have some
value.

TR/Thompson Reuters also has a competitive product for much less and you can't
really go wrong with either for 99% of use cases.

There are also many stand alone news sources you could use. Benzinga comes to
mind as one example.

Interesting note - Bloomberg is highly protective of their IP and has been
know to write takedown notices of screenshots posted online.

// built 2 SaaS Fintech systems

------
lefstathiou
I think Bloomberg is a lot weaker than people realize (in terms of competitive
position). It offers a lot of functionality as many threads have pointed out
but at any given time, the marginal user utilizes 0.5% of what it does. I sat
in fixed income origination for years and the only reason I used it was to
find some obscure pricing details which are now available for free elsewhere
and to quickly export interest rate curves. Our traders definitely found it
mission critical but there were 3 of them and 40 of us. Now if you go to
someone within equity-linked securities, they will use it for a variety of
different reasons but my friends there admitted they used it for 2-4 discrete
pieces of functionality.

I believe one of their great data advantages is access. Buy a terminal and you
will now have access to niche email distribution lists that no website sees or
crawls with important market data (like fixed income bwics).

I believe it is difficult to attack Bloomberg head on as others are trying
(like money.net or Eikon) but relatively easy to build really rich ecosystems
in niche places outside of Bloomberg. Have you heard of a company called
Intex? Probably not. In the global structured products market they are a
monopoly solution generating 100-200mm in top line with 100 employees and 3
sales people. Wildly profitable but try to start something like that without
being in structured products for years and you're dead on arrival. No one will
give you the data you need.

~~~
lefstathiou
PS: Here is an example of a great niche tool we loved as analysts and
associates with thousands of active professional users. It was created by one
person on the side (now a team of two) and generates hundreds of thousands of
dollars in fully automated revenue. The challenge is that those who use EDGAR
frequently instantly see the utility but someone outside of the industry would
not know this even exists or the problem it solved.

www.bamsec.com

ps this is not a personal plug. I do know the founder now but only after I
discovered tool and reached out.

~~~
rpedela
I am curious what you find compelling about Bamsec? It certainly has a cleaner
interface than EDGAR, but are there any other advantages?

~~~
lefstathiou
In a word: Speed. As an analyst and associate I spent a ton of time on EDGAR
and this tool wiped out easily 20 to 45 min of work a day. It's a collection
of subtle enhancements for example it pulls the title of an 8k rather than me
having to guess which 8k out of a dozen contain the information I need. It now
has a transcript search that allows you to search for word references across
all filing (dozens to hundreds at a time) for a company which can easily save
hours. There are a lot of subtle enhancements that are not worth enumerating
on HN but feel free to ping me and I can go deeper into it if you want.

------
matco11
Bloomberg (the company) became the de facto standard in the financial industry
decades before Mike Bloomberg became a politician.

Mike Bloomberg started the company because while working at Merrill Lynch (in
the 80ies) he thought the computer terminals banks used at the time to see
stock and bond prices where ridiculous. He got funded by Merrill Lynch and
disrupted the industry, overtaking rivals like Reuters (which well into the
90ies was usually considered the most trustworthy source for stock data)

You needed their special hardware only until the late nineties (the "Bloomberg
box" \- consider that up until around 96 or 97, only few employees would have
internet access on their desktop, even inside "bulge bracket" investment
banks): nowadays, you can get Blooomberg terminal on their workstation or on
your own hardware. Likewise, you can run in on a dedicated connection, or on
your normal internet line.

The key element of Bloomberg terminal is reliability: it feeds data you can
usually trust and price feeds you can almost certainly trust. When you are
checking prices changing several times a second across exchanges in different
part of the world that's no easy feat). That's crucial when millions of
dollars are at stake.

Second is the ability to access 80% of the data and information you would ever
want to check wihout leaving the terminal.

Third ingredient is ease of use.

Fourth is incredible customer service.

Fifth is innovation: they continuously innovate, improve old features, add new
features, introduce access to new data/information.

Once you remove the cost of the underlying live price feeds (from stock
exchanges), The Bloomberg terminal is not that expensive for what it does.
Bear in mind its customers are people that spend their day optimizing their
financial decisions: if there was something cheaper working as well, they
would go for it. If there was something working even better, they would go for
it, probably even at a higher price point (because that's how the economics in
the banking and investing world work).

Fun read: [https://www.fastcompany.com/3051883/behind-the-brand/the-
blo...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3051883/behind-the-brand/the-bloomberg-
terminal)

~~~
amygdyl
Bloomberg was a partner at Solomon Brothers, where he developed their in house
IT systems.

Solly infamously demutualized, under John Gutfreund, and in that process,
Bloomberg left, presumably with any IP waivers he needed (after all, they had
to get partners to agree to be paid off, and that was a political battle) and
from that position, it was I imagine, certainly easier, to attract Merril to
invest in the new venture, as 50% partners.

Merill later sold i think all but a token stake, and Bloomberg was the
majority buyer for their shares.

At no time did Michael Bloomberg work for Merill Lynch.

His timing, and trading, was impeccable.

Solly was long the 800lb gorilla of fixed income.

Coming from a former partner, the intimacy he had with the intriciacies of
data (especially the archaic clearing systems he led to be automated,
literally Solomon Brothers cared only for their front desks by habit,
legendarily earning so much as to get away with a devil may care attitude long
past when most firms would have been bust by conterparties declaring oprisk
indigestible) he probably could have held a beauty parade for potential
investors. Merril was probably chosen for two equally important
characteristics, however: passivity as investors, and out size retail
salesforce, immediate users for new equities data products Bloomberg wanted to
launch.

Pretty sure they were long one of the largest Tandem customers, and may still
rum Tandem for messaging. As noted in other comments, their messaging is nigh
bullet proof. As is also noted in other comments, they give a real damn about
latency, so make telcos (at least telco sales reps) weep no doubt more than
most customers.

If there is a lesson for the startup world, i think it is this (besides way to
trade to get his investment): there are apparently infinite messaging
products, and a multiple thereof of features for messaging, but if you want to
grow a high margin niche monopoly, or just a business period, build your
messaging like civilization itself depends on it. How many hundreds of
billions in capital have been made and lost in what are essentially messaging
products? But name one that can count a few nines of reliability you'd entrust
your capital, your family's emergencies, your daily banking, to, that is on
the web?

------
anonu
\- the custom keyboard may have been a holdover from the early versions of
Bloomberg, today its not as useful. I personally think the key response on it
is terrible. So I actually just keep it plugged in for the fingerprint
scanner.

\- bbg is about quick access to data. Most of the data is publicly available.
But if you serve it up super quick and consistently, people value that

\- the chat application is what the vast majority of people pay for, IMHO.
This gives you access to most other people in your industry or product group.
This is how business is conducted. \- bbg has an army of people backing their
product.. from the bbg help to data cleaners. This ensures quality for the
high price you're paying

------
arx1422
Another point - Bloomberg by an large doesn't fail. This isn't some consumer
"build fast, break things, and iterate" model. I can remember one time in my
two decades using Bloomberg that something broke. For half a day this year the
IB chat system went down. The world of finance practically ground to a halt.
But that was the wild exception. Compared to most platforms Bloomberg may be a
bit archaic but it is rock solid and thats way more important when you have
billions on the line in realtime.

~~~
raldi
What's amazing about this is that (at least as of the time when I worked
there, 2003-2007) they've always broken just about every rule about coding
style, DRY, unit tests, and so on ("We're not writing textbooks here") and yet
(or because of this) were by a wide margin the highest-velocity shipper-of
features I've ever known.

And this was all done while meeting the highest standards of performance and
reliability. How'd they do it? I'd say two things: heavy investment in human
testers, and an amazingly-rich "immune system": Deploy a bug in your new
version of a Bloomberg function? Last week's code is still running alongside
it, and in seconds you can route that one function over to the old instance
while keeping all the other terminal functions on the new version. And an
automated system might do it for you before you even get paged.

------
aysfrm11
I used the Bloomberg terminal until 2010 so things might have changed since
then. The breadth of the data is unrivaled as far as I know, enough examples
have been given in the comments. Concerning the data quality I do have to
object though, in my area of expertise (mutual funds at the time) Bloomberg
data was far from perfect and there were better quality data sources
available. I dont doubt that they deliver reliable real time quotes from stock
exchanges etc.

Excel integration was generally good, at the time I used the Terminal you had
however to decide between two types of applications. The original Terminal
which is linked to one PC, i.e. can only be accessed from one specific PC at
work and not from home, or the 'Bloomberg anywhere' edition, which I believe
was launched as some kind of remote application from a browser and could be
used at any PC. The issue with the latter option was that it did not offer
Excel integration.

I never liked the UI, some windows application with a lot of 'Terminal'
baggage from the 1980's. I think they should re-build the whole thing as a
browser based application, not replacing the old 'Terminal' application that
current users are accustomed to but to on-board new users on a modern platform
with a long term migration path to shut down the current application for good.
Otherwise they might be replaced by a newcomer eventually...

[https://www.money.net/](https://www.money.net/) seems to be such a potential
newcomer, especially considering the much more reasonable price point and the
use of current technology.

~~~
kgwgk
> I think they should re-build the whole thing as a browser based application

Hopefully they understand that it would be a terrible idea. The current
interface is orders magnitude more usable and responsive than a web interface
could be. Despite the "terminal" look-and-feel it's constantly evolving and
many parts are quite modern.

------
rl3
315,000 subscribers paying north of $20,000 per year, as of 2013.[0] _Whoa._

[0] [https://qz.com/84961/this-is-how-much-a-bloomberg-
terminal-c...](https://qz.com/84961/this-is-how-much-a-bloomberg-terminal-
costs/)

~~~
dirtyaura
It's interesting to think about from a different angle:

Paul Graham once wrote that "information wants to be free", and that there are
very few areas in which you can make a significant revenue by selling
information, financial information being the exception.

$6B ($9b) seems to be the upper bound of revenue for an information product
(company). And Bloomberg has unusually wide moat.

~~~
mistermumble
Minor correction: it was Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog fame) who said
"Information wants to be free". Paul Graham may have quoted it -- along with a
multitude of others, since it was first uttered in 1984.

Actually turns out the original quote attributed to Brand is not quite right.
There is a qualifier ("Information almost wants to be free"), but that
qualifier dropped off along the way.

See [http://www.digitopoly.org/2015/10/25/information-wants-to-
be...](http://www.digitopoly.org/2015/10/25/information-wants-to-be-free-the-
history-of-that-quote/)

~~~
dirtyaura
Thanks for the correction! I recall that I learned the phrase from pg's
writing or talk, and it has stuck with me since so I mistakenly attributed it
to pg.

------
markatkinson
I used to work for Bloomberg. They bring together countless data feeds,
analytical tools, some analysis and news into one central location. They pump
a lot of money into these data capturing efforts. They hire hoards of data
capturing grunts to trawl the web for renewable energy projects and heavens
knows how many more to process financial statements.

I suppose at the end of the day even though they do all this I'm not 100% sure
they do it very well. I don't use the terminal or claim to know how, but it
seems to have have become an essential tool for many people in the finance
industry.

Although after all that I know there is a joke going around that the main
reason most people fork out for the terminal is for the chat functionality.

------
blunte
I asked the finance guys at the asset management firm I worked at last, and
they said that the #1 value to them was in the chat. So many deals are
arranged via the built-in chat system. News can be acquired from many places,
but if you capture the communication (or create the platform, as BB did), then
you capture your audience.

It's very hard to break out of that, because doing so means you're now
excluded from some of the most useful and important information. Nobody wants
to be first to leave, and convincing enough users to leave en masse to create
or use an alternative seems impossible at this point.

~~~
isubkhankulov
Bloomberg is also aggressive in retaining customers. A few years back, there
was a scandal where Bloomberg News reporters used Terminal data to see that a
target of their news story had not logged in for a bit and wrote about it.
Since this was breach of trust between the two parts of Bloomberg, many of the
banks starting looking into alternatives for BBG chat, and Bloomberg responded
by offering the banks (their existing customers) many discounted terminals.
Which seemed to have worked since the scandal died down and their chat is
still the leader in wall street communication.

~~~
areyousure
In case anyone else was curious about this scandal, I found the following
contemporary article writing about it:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/business/media/bloomberg-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/business/media/bloomberg-
admits-terminal-snooping.html)

According to [https://qz.com/83445/what-bloomberg-employees-can-see-
when-t...](https://qz.com/83445/what-bloomberg-employees-can-see-when-they-
snoop-on-customers/) , _all_ Bloomberg employees could see when a user last
logged in (like "w" in Unix), transcripts of all chats between the user and
customer service (these chats are triggered by pressing F1/HELP twice, as
other comments have indicated), and how many times the user used specific
functions over the last 30 days.

------
seesomesense
Symphony was marketed by Goldman Sachs and Blackrock as a $15 Bloomberg
killer, but still has not gained much traction. Bloomberg provides real-time
data feeds, analysis tools, real-time secure communication with other traders,
news and entertainment. When you are looking after AUMs of tens or hundreds of
billions, $24,000 a year for a Bloomberg subscription is negligible.

"Potential users don’t want to get onboard unless all the other people in
their ecosystem are on the service. That dynamic obviously keeps most people
from joining Symphony. Most everyone working in financial markets is already
on Bloomberg, and it would take virtually everyone leaving at the same time to
give Symphony critical mass.

“I think Facebook is the best comparison,” Ayzerov says. “If Facebook had only
one fourth of your friends, you wouldn’t use it. The advantage of Bloomberg is
that every financial person has it.”"

See
[http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/3572874/banking...](http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/3572874/banking-
and-capital-markets-trading-and-technology/symphony-faces-stiff-obstacle-
bloomberg.html) for some of the obstacles that Symphony faces

------
seesomesense
"BMAP is the coolest.

Pulls up a global map with "near-realtime" locations of cargo ships, offshore
oil derricks and wind farms, tropical depressions and hurricanes, uranium
mines, all kinds of crazy stuff.

You can zoom in on the Panama Canal and see which oil tankers under whose flag
are waiting in line to pass through, where they're going and how much oil
they're carrying.

You can sort the world's ocean-going cargo vessels by commodity, to see where
all the orange juice is."

[https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-coolest-functions-on-
Bloo...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-coolest-functions-on-Bloomberg)

------
tezza
* Bloomberg Chat

* It is a well accepted reference. You will often see a screenshot of a bloomberg terminal as "proof" of something

~~~
afeezaziz
Voting up on the Bloomberg Chat. Most of the people in Finance do not really
use other functions but due to network effects, most people get 'connected'
via Bloomberg Chat.

~~~
peteretep
Please explain what Bloomberg chat is, and how you find people via it.

~~~
gaius
It's like MSN Messenger or AOL, except that the identities of people on it are
guaranteed, and things said on it are effectively contracts. Reuters operate a
similar system. There are others too but no-one uses them.

~~~
danpalmer
Can you expand? Are identities checked and referenced, or enforced socially
like on LinkedIn? When you say things are effectively contracts, I've heard
about the very solid principles that some finance people work to - "if we said
it then we will stand by it" sort of things - or does Bloomberg step in to
arbitrate, or are chats accessible by the employing companies, how are
contracts enforced?

~~~
gaius
They are "checked" in the sense that ultimately there's a name associated with
that expensive login. All chats are logged and available to compliance,
regulators, etc. Bloomberg won't arbitrate but they don't have to - everyone
knows that if you welshed on a deal, no-one would ever deal with you again.
This is the same way that voice calls in banks work too.

~~~
dirtbox
I'm amazed this hasn't been exploited.

~~~
gaius
Exploited in what way?

~~~
dirtbox
Entered the network, manipulated data, created misinformation, use social
engineering tricks and tried to control stock pricing. When you have a
platform only accessible to the elite, it makes the possibilities extremely
tempting.

~~~
gaius
You would have more luck impersonating voices on the phone!

------
princeb
it's everything:

\- news articles

\- squawk

\- economic data releases

\- historical and live market data

\- asset pricing

\- charts and analytics

\- click trading

\- trade execution and transaction cost analysis

\- trade order management and post trade processing

\- portfolio and risk management

\- alerts

\- chat

\- mail

\- Excel integration

\- amazing stuff like DINE<GO>, FLY<GO>, and POSH<GO> (lol)

there's probably a ton more stuff that i don't use and don't know. bloomberg
is a mile wide and a mile deep in some areas.

you can get any of these features individually from plenty of service
providers in the market. some are less specialized and cheaper and some are
more specialized and more expensive. if you don't want to manage fifty
different contracts with different service providers bloomberg provides a one-
stop shop.

bloomberg is more than just data now. it wants to be absolutely everything
that a financial firm needs - front office, middle office, back office.

~~~
mrkgnao
> DINE<GO>, FLY<GO>, and POSH<GO>

Can you ... can you order takeout from a Bloomberg terminal?

~~~
knight17
"FLY and DINE give you flight schedules and restaurant listings and reviews."

"POSH, a Craigslist for the wealthy"

[https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-coolest-functions-on-
Bloo...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-coolest-functions-on-Bloomberg/)

Banking software also use this type of codes to reach different functions:
post a cheque, take a draft, print an account statement, update customer
record, loan balance/amortisation/payback history; in short, they do
everything with short 3-4-5 letter keywords. This type of system has very high
learning curve ("Hey Alex, what's the keyword for locker rent arrears list?");
but it is a joy to watch competent people operate the program to get things
done.

Many business software also work this way (SAP ERP/Oracle Financials), but
none of them are likely to be as fast as Bloomberg though. AutoCAD also has
some commands like this (like Emacs'/Vim's ex/M-x prompt? ":"/"M-x"). I wish
other consumer software also allowed access to screens/dialog boxes and
functions in this direct manner without having to click menus and buttons a
thousand times.

------
arx1422
Bloomberg has a massive network effect which makes it difficult to displace.
Particularly when you move away from exchange traded products like equities
and into areas like corporate fixed income, interactions are still conducted
via bilateral discussion (i.e., online chat and text price dissemination). To
be in the game you need to be where everyone else is talking. There is an
ecosystem of price scraping and trade processing in Bloomberg which
facilitates the whole trade and portfolio management process. I can route
orders via Bloomberg to any broker and monitor execution of my orders in real-
time. No the costs are not cheap but it is a lot cheaper than hiring several
members of an operations team which would be necessary if this was all done
manually.

Bloomberg is also like an operating system. For example, there are electronic
execution venues in many types of instruments which use the Bloomberg as their
front-end. This is very valuable. When you are a trader, screen real estate is
critical. You can have 6 30" monitors and it still isn't enough if your tools
are fragmented across 50 platforms. The more you can keep things integrated
into a few core tools the better.

You are also paying a ton for ultra-responsive service. When millions or
billions are on the line you don't have time to mess around on a help-line. On
a Bloomberg you have 24-7 ultra-responsive skilled help who are responsive in
around 30 seconds.

There are other reasons but end of the day if you are a pro then 30k/year
isn't cheap but its a lot cheaper than trying to hack around with amateur
tools.

~~~
MagnumOpus
> 24-7 ultra-responsive skilled help who are responsive in around 30 seconds

True apart from the "skilled" part. They have cut-n-paste monkeys staffing 1st
line help-help support and you know it.

Any question that actually involves thinking (bugs in their software or
interesting questions about the API or details of their financial models) just
gets passed through a game of telephones until you reach the actual competent
people hours or days after you have devised a workaround for the burning issue
yourself.

------
greenyoda
It's more than news. It also provides real-time financial data, access to
trading, and a way to securely communicate with other traders.

You can find some background here on what it does:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_Terminal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_Terminal)

------
nodesocket
UCF has a great tutorial video on the Bloomberg terminal. It is an hour and 7
minutes long, but watch it and you will see why it's the standard in finance.
The data/news feed is great and UX is optimized for speed, dense display of
information, and filtering.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8HiHZcgEE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8HiHZcgEE)

~~~
barnabee
> UX is optimized for speed, dense display of information, and filtering

I often wish more software would make the same UX trade-offs.

I suspect this is why a lot of advanced users stick with the command line - a
better "pro" UX is surely possible (REPLs / notebook style interfaces are a
limited example) but outside of programming tools there doesn't seem to be
much serious effort in this space.

~~~
twic
> I often wish more software would make the same UX trade-offs.

It's worth noting that this is the antithesis of mainstream designer thinking
right now. Designers i've worked with want to minimise the amount of
information on screen to maximise its impact and clarity; lots of blank space,
lots of elegance. Perhaps this works for general consumer apps, but it's not
what heavy professional users want, are accustomed to, or can make the best
use of.

------
HoyaSaxa
It is pretty simple: network effects.

Nearly every trader, sales person, and investment manager in finance has a
bloomberg terminal which is guaranteed to own a lot of screen real estate on
their monitors. If you need to get in touch with someone as quickly and
efficiently as possible, bloomberg chat is the way to go. You are usually
involved in multiple conversations at once so phones just don't cut it.

I traded two different products that were almost exclusively traded via IB
(chat) or MSG (email like). There is nothing special about either of those
communication channels, but market norms are incredibly powerful.

As others are mentioning, Bloomberg also centralizes a ton of different data,
but this much easier to replicate than the network effects of the products
above.

------
ry4n413
It's fast in terms of time takes from press release to screen, total news
coverage is unrivaled (Reuters you could say maybe), forgot how many trillions
of dollars they control all together. bonds they are the king, tradebook,
their international financial data is a little rough, and their sales force is
relentless. Try to sell me a god damn terminal every time. also they were
ahead of pack regarding supply chain data, graph modeling, they are moving
into Law.

~~~
sparkling
Scraping press releases, collecting news from various media outlets,
monitoring socialmedia and then pushing all this info to a web/desktop app in
real time seams rather trivial...? Wheres the secret sauce?

~~~
ry4n413
first to market?

------
rodionos
The terminal is the 'last-mile' endpoint in a centralized system that delivers
real-time data to subscribers with low latency and actually allows them to
take action on data. Low latency is what sets it apart from closest
competitors such as Reuters.

The ability to trade is perhaps no so important these days given the advent of
algo trading/stat arb, but it serves to emphasize the point that there is more
to the terminal than just viewing the data.

------
uptown
I think it has very little to do with the end-user hardware, and everything to
do with their data. Bloomberg is dominant in data quality. Really, whatever
financial information you want, you can get, provided you're willing and able
to pay the price.

Their data is faster and cleaner than most of their competition. Personally, I
find their interface clunky by today's standards, but it's entrenched in the
industry, so there's a non-trivial learning "cost" for anyone considering
switching away, and even if they're able to adapt to a new interface, they're
likely to find holes in the available data. Beyond their data, they connect
the financial industry over Bloomberg chat, so it's got the network effect
there. The hardware itself is not a huge factor IMO. Plenty of people use
Bloomberg terminals, via Bloomberg Anywhere, logging in from their standard
desktop with their normal Windows keyboards.

------
taude
It's like Emacs or VIM for financial market professionals.

------
mpta
There are some good answers here about why BBG has become the de facto
information tool for folks who work in finance. Speaking as someone who works
in finance -- there are, in my opinion, opportunities to dethrone BBG, but the
most effective attack vectors will be more niche markets where information can
be easily digitized, organized, and presented in a way that beats BBG's
interface.

I work with municipal bonds - long story short, the muni market is a fixed
income market with several legal and structural characteristics which add
complexity over the corporate and government bond markets.

For example - generally municipal bonds are structured with serial maturities
and a 10 year par call option, which means issuers are constantly refinancing,
paying bonds down with cash, etc. This introduces complexity around _even
knowing what bonds an issuer still has outstanding_. To someone who works with
corporates, you'd just pull up the ticker and immediately see what's there -
for our market, it takes a lot of manual effort to track the bonds, digitize
old documents, and present that information in a logical interface.

(Similar to the SEC's EDGAR, there is an information repository for the
municipal market called EMMA, which was introduced post-crisis - so it is
fairly easy to pull recent disclosures, but very difficult to track older
bonds/documents.)

On the investment banking side, we have one Bloomberg terminal for our entire
floor, since the subscription is fairly expensive and we don't have as much
need for the info as the traders do. If a company were to simply track
information about municipal bonds, starting with the largest issuers, they
could undercut Bloomberg in this market and make a good chunk of subscription
revenue.

I have to imagine these opportunities exist elsewhere as well. I doubt that
there are many folks who use BBG functions for more than the handful of
markets in which they participate. I bet that there are markets where smaller
companies could do just as good a job as BBG at gathering information for a
lower cost.

A thought I just had while typing this comment - to me, BBG seems analogous to
a cable TV bundle, where you pay for a ton of channels that you don't use. I
wonder if competing against BBG in single markets would motivate them to
introduce tiered/a la carte subscription models? The one feature keeping
everyone on Bloomberg is chat (and to a certain extent, the actual trading
platform) - in my case, if we could have that while only subscribing to a few
functions, that would probably be enough for us and could save on subscription
costs.

------
afeezaziz
Network effects especially for the chat function. Most of other functions are
easily replicated by by Reuters Thompson, one of Bloomberg's competitors.

------
eej71
I think there are a few reasons that keeps them at the top of the heap vs.
their nearest competitors (S&P CapIQ, Factset, Thompson/Reuters).

One if Mike Bloomberg himself. He is a rarity. He is a founder who is still
very active in the company. He certainly doesn't need to go to work every day
for the money. He is worth billions and is 75. I think he genuinely loves the
work and he demands the same work ethic from those around him. I would imagine
that when he is in the building, you can "feel" it in the air. That gravitas
that was frequently on display when he was mayor of NYC is probably there
every day whenever he holds court on a topic.

Second, I believe Bloomberg has grown organically. I think it's much easier to
present a complete and consistent system when you've built most of it
yourself. A company like TR has been built up through acquisitions and it at
times shows in the product. Factset has adopted a similar strategy as of late.

Third, while the product at times has a distinctive UI/UX experience, it has
always seemed super fast at least to my eyes. Less is true of their
competitors.

------
unixhero
You are looking at this from a computer engineer's point of view (perhaps).
However if you look at it from the world of finance, access to a data broker
with up to date(seconds) information where you can also chat with major bank
traders and hedge funds the package is very complete.

Data brokers. Not a regular thing in comp.sci, but very much so in the world
of finance.

~~~
ribs
I don't think you've answered the question of why custom hardware is required.
All of the information resources and channels you mention could be accessed
from more common hardware.

~~~
gaius
Apart from the keyboard, a present day Bloomberg is just a common PC and
monitor.

------
peterbonney
Point of clarification: Bloomberg does not _require_ special hardware to use,
though they do _offer_ special hardware that integrates well with the
software. At the time I left finance, I used a regular off-the-shelf PC with
Dell monitors and a Das Keyboard, and it ran all the software I used on a
daily basis (Bloomberg, Office, etc.).

------
brainrain
Interesting read on Bloomberg vs Symphony (through an EU policy lens, but has
a lot of details about BBG business model I hadn't read elsewhere)
[http://www.politico.eu/article/bloomberg-vs-the-
banks/](http://www.politico.eu/article/bloomberg-vs-the-banks/)

~~~
kanwisher
I worked on Thomson Reuters Messenger, which Symphony tried hiring ex-Thomson
people to work on. Symphony is a joke and will never gain any traction in any
market. Bloomberg is the king, and if you don't have money you use Reuters.
Otherwise your probably not very high end on finance.

~~~
aaaazzzz
Could you please elaborate on "Symphony is a joke"? Based on the little that
I've read about it, it's pricing structure and the slew of mega banks behind
it seem to make it a good choice for Terminal customers who use it just for
the chat (IB) functionality. Thanks.

------
jowalski
Well, the monopoly aspect has had a limiting effect on a few things I've been
involved in, at least in government/quasi-government. Given that some data
series I've used are only (? or most conveniently) available through the
terminal, it has meant having only half-automated tools. You always still need
to do a weekly walk down the hall to a terminal followed by a lengthy boot-up
on an old box, entering of password, opening of spreadsheet. They tend to lock
down those machines too.

While I guess there are APIs, I don't get the impression they're easy to just
integrate into any old workflow if the terminal is down the hall or even on
the other side of your desk. It's all linked to that terminal, no? Pretty
annoying if you ask me, from a programmers standpoint. Not to mention another
case of closed, proprietary tech in the financial sector.

~~~
ewood
In many cases it is not Bloomberg's monopoly but the data provider's. The
licensing and royalty agreements between Bloomberg and the data provider have
very onerous terms including restricting how many screens the data can be
displayed on, what mediums the data can be transferred to, and where and for
what purpose the data can be used. The terminal restrictions and API
limitations that Bloomberg imposes are usually driven by these concerns.

Bloomberg offers less restrictive APIs but they are even more costly than a
terminal license and often require the end user to sign agreements with the
data providers directly and pay additional royalties.

------
rabboRubble
You've had lots of answers but I have a few other points that are worthy to
mention...

The #1 key / function on a Bloomberg terminal is the Message key. Just like
people are on Facebook because other people are on FB and not MySpace is the
driver behind BB's message function. Bloomberg messages are key for
relationship maintenance and informal (or even semi-formal) information
exchange.

BB is a little hard to learn how to use because of all the special keys and
function short codes. But because of those special keys and functions, once
you are trained, the system is blazing fast to operate. Blazing fast in a
trading environment is especially important to grumpy trading staff.

Which gets us to deal capture... so with the BB messaging system being so
popular and in the early days being used to talk about deals, Bloomberg
created a deal capture element to the system. So in addition to chatting with
your street counterpart, you could formally confirm the deal you just messaged
with your buddy. So take the social, add the deal capture, and add the fast &
reliable, you have a damn good vanilla dealing system with zero overhead
beyond monthly terminal cost, which you are paying anyway.

Unlike Reuters market data client-side infrastructure, BB terminal
implementation requires low technical knowledge. Leased line and a black box
communications server and bango you are up and running. Reuters, you need
multiple Unix servers, so you need a Unix admin plus 1 more guy in case Unix
admin #1 goes on holiday, plus leased lines, plus the comms equipment, plus
this and plus that.

My old firm had 1 employee dedicated to untangling Reuters bills as there were
user costs, systems as data user costs, depreciation costs, real time data
costs, blah blah blah. Reuters billing had elements of self-auditing and
internal real time data subscription management. BB bills are a list of BB
terminal IDs which are easily mapped to user X and department Y. BB real time
data feed costs are tied to specific user. You could process a Bloomberg
invoice in 30 minutes with a temp staff.

------
kgwgk
You are not paying for the hardware, you're paying for the platform and data.
The monitor is a regular monitor (and I think it's only marginally used). The
keyboard has a few extra keys which are convenient but not absolutely required
(you can also use Bloomberg on a laptop).

------
lordnacho
Longtime user of Bloomberg here, both finance and coding experience.

You no longer need special hardware to use the terminal. In fact the special
keys are just mappings to your F keys, and you'll know which one is which
without the keyboard. They have a sticker strip if you really need it. BTW the
keyboard is crap, the buttons aren't balanced meaning the keys kinda stick,
making you type slower.

Data is the only reason you need this thing. It's truly comprehensive how many
data sources are all accessible through a single syntax. I've traded single
stocks, corporate bonds, CDS, ETFs, index options, equity options, commodity
futures, government bonds, interest rate swaps, IR swaptions, FX, FX options,
and so on. You can get a price chart for all of them just by typing in a code
followed by "GP". Or you can get relevant news.

On the API side, it's pretty easy to pull the data you need from the terminal.
There's .NET, python, java, etc libraries for you, with lots of examples. And
just about every imaginable field is there.

Bloomberg Chat is useful in certain parts of the industry. You can have all
your brokers set up with individual 1-on-1 chats, yet still blast out a quote
request as in "USD 5Y, 100K dv01, please" and they will all see it without
knowing how many people you're talking to. A lot of people are still trading
in the stone age, and Bloomberg is certified for keeping records for this sort
of thing. You might have heard about BBG Chat in the recent LIBOR trials.

There's also a whole pseudo-exchange functionality. Basically you can get
approved to get prices from each broker, and then you can trade with them by
sending them tickets via Bloomberg. I always thought that was crap, but some
people like it, depends on their niche.

It's kinda ripe for disruption though. 24K is a lot for the basic package, and
if you want to actually get the data, rather than just the interface into it,
you have to pay the underlying provider. That gets pricy quite quickly. Also
live data costs money, too, and it's not going to be fast. Unless you get the
leased line (if you're in the City of London, it's not a problem), which is
more money again. And not especially fast, since there's an extra hop. I'm not
sure I buy the argument that finance professionals know how to use it, so bbg
is entrenched. If you understand what you're looking for, you're not going to
have a problem finding it on some other system. For a lot of things such as
common stocks, Yahoo and Google are not going to have any less information.

I've never thought highly of bloomberg's customer service. At most they're
useful for discovering functions that you don't know the shortcut for. When
there's anything remotely complicated, they seem to do a huge internal goose
chase and then eventually get back to you with "can't do it". Basically
anything API related, the Help Help guys will not know what to do and end up
waiting for a dev. Also the official account manager keeps changing and every
time you get a new one they pester you to show you some obscure functionality.

~~~
kgwgk
> For a lot of things such as common stocks, Yahoo and Google are not going to
> have any less information.

This makes me wonder how much should I trust everything else you said...

~~~
sah2ed
Why do you say this?

(FWIW, I find many of lordnacho's HN contributions to be decent and in many
cases insightful).

~~~
kgwgk
There are lots of things on bloomblerg that cannot be found at google or
yahoo... To name only a few: intraday market data, company filings,
detailed/processed financial information (product/geographic segmentation,
non-gaap metrics), transcripts of earnings calls, sell-side estimates,
corporate actions (M&A, IPOs/secondary offerings), information about
management, customers, suppliers, institutional shareholders...

~~~
lordnacho
Bloomberg only keeps its intraday data for 50 days. Google does have intraday
data, but you need to know how to get it via the right http call.

[https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NYSE%3AXOM&ei=X2uzWInZGYa...](https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NYSE%3AXOM&ei=X2uzWInZGYadUeC-
ltgO)

There's the board of Exxon Mobil, along with links to analyst estimates,
company filings, related firms, calendar of their calls, transcripts, list of
institutional shareholders, and so on.

Most of the things you mention are certainly easier to find on a terminal, but
you can get them for free elsewhere. Also don't forget many things on
Bloomberg require you to pay even more. Short interest data on European stocks
for instance.

~~~
kgwgk
I don't know how to get the intraday data from Google, do you also get 50
days, quotes, trades, volumes traded...? There is some useful info in the
reuters.com page linked from google. But still there are so many things that
are not there. There is only very basic financial info, and I don't think you
get it in google finance within minutes of it being published. Of course you
could read the press release for free. And read every filing from the company
yourself, and every filing from any related company, and from any asset
manager who might have a relevant disclosure. And then you you can process all
that data to put it in a comparable format. All for free!

------
brw12
Basically, there isn't just "news" as in stories -- there's tons of data
that's annoying, hard or impossible to find without paying various parties for
it and scraping it, which Bloomberg makes available in one place, sorted and
sortable and searchable, and possible to import automatically into Excel. Eg.,
it's the most reliable source of dates, times, and data content for upcoming
and past macroeconomic announcements and earnings announcements; you can fetch
stock index components with their current weights in the basket; and you can
graph all sorts of things against each other using their powerful graphing
software.

------
sz4kerto
Chat. In other words: whoever matters is accessible through it. It's an
integrated platform for trading that also includes 'social', you can do every
bit of your workflow there -- communication, sales, research, trade.

------
jzwinck
I worked there for quite a while. I'll try to address some of your specific
questions directly.

> it's just a portal that gives the news

A portal? Bloomberg News has its very own reporters (and jourobots). They
investigate and write original content. People usually don't buy the terminal
(~2000 USD/month) only for that, but if they do, they can read everything
directly in the terminal.

> What I don't get is why have a custom monitor, keyboard?

The monitor is, these days, only about branding. Ten to fifteen years ago,
Bloomberg offered good-quality LCD screens with integrated mounting arms for 2
or 4, at a time when that was a pretty high-end setup. As LCD screens became
cheap and ubiquitous, many users don't have the Bloomberg ones, but they still
have the Bloomberg keyboard. It's useful because it has special labels for a
few hotkeys, plus some of them have extras like fingerprint readers. If you
lack the special keyboard you can press Alt+K on any keyboard and the terminal
will show you a graphic of the special keys for reference.

But to really understand why they have a special keyboard, you need to look
back a good long while. That's covered here:
[https://www.fastcompany.com/3051883/behind-the-brand/the-
blo...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3051883/behind-the-brand/the-bloomberg-
terminal) \- the gist is that a "Bloomberg terminal" used to be a real
terminal, connected to a magic box on the customer premises (which served
several terminals). There have been many, many iterations of the terminal
hardware, from a dedicated proprietary box, to software running on Sparc
workstations, to software running on Windows, with the keyboard becoming more
like a PC keyboard around the turn of the century.

> is it a VPN

No. Traditionally, customers connect their terminals back to the Bloomberg
service via leased lines (i.e. not the internet). But for many years now you
have the option of using the internet, though not everyone wants that.

> The cost of the product is ridiculous.

The cost of the product is much less than what some customers would be willing
to pay. Most customers pay about the same monthly fee, regardless of where
they are in the world, regardless of their corporate income statement, etc. So
yes, it seems expensive to people who wouldn't get that much out of it. Some
schools get a discount.

> Is there a cheaper alternative that does not require specialised hardware?

Bloomberg does not require specialized hardware at all. You can install it on
any Windows laptop, and you are more than welcome to do so. As for cheaper--
yes, there are lots of things which are cheaper, but you will be hard-pressed
to find any combination of those which is still cheaper and yet does most of
what Bloomberg does (i.e. has similar quantity and quality of data, and
applications built up).

> I know Bloomberg is a politician

He is now, but he was not when his company went from 0 users to 100,000 users.

------
cauterized
It's got a network-effect moat. The terminal isn't just a way to get
information. It's a communication platform for members of the financial
industry. And all the people they want to talk to are already there.

------
snowplay
An alternative to Bloomberg Terminal, on the research side, is Tiingo, an
amazing financial data portal. They ask that if you use it, you pay a minimum
of $7 per month, though that is not currently enforced.

~~~
rishifromtiingo
Founder of Tiingo.com - it made top 10 of HackerNews before
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10762913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10762913))

Thanks for the mention! The goal is to help liberate financial data and make
it accessible to everyone via tools and education. I've already gone where
bloomberg doesn't, like a custom metrics creator for the screener, and the
podcast is top-rated. Either way, I work my butt off because I want everybody
to have access to the same tools I did.

Thank you for mentioning the platform :) let me know if you have any
questions! [https://www.tiingo.com](https://www.tiingo.com)

~~~
jldugger
The one thing that's somewhat unavailable to me is bond data. Any plans in
that space?

For example, Planet Money's toxic asset CUISP: 41161PUA9, part of HVMLT
2005-10 B6. I'd be neat to have visibility into that without paying bloomberg
20k.

------
anjc
It seems as if there's a lot of behind the scenes data aggregation and
analytics, which is good. But surely somebody has created a cheap variation on
the rest of it? I.e. software with keystrokes to quickly access open financial
data? I mean there's nothing to stop someone doing that, getting custom
keyboards made, and selling it for a tiny fraction of the price right?

I'd imagine that there are quite a lot of people who fancy trading as
something of a hobby but who will never pay for Bloomberg.

~~~
uzoodoo
There's Eikon from Thomson Reuters, which is considerably cheaper

~~~
Vindicis
I don't know if I'd say considerably. It all depends on what data you need.
They have more fine-grained purchases than Bloomberg though, so it can be
cheaper, depending on your use-case.

------
mathattack
The most important thing is it's ubiquitous in Finance. If everyone has it,
it's very hard for someone else to introduce a competitor that others don't
have.

It's also got an interface that everyone is used to. Not a great interface,
but one that everyone knows.

There are cheaper alternatives, as well as easier to use alternatives, and
alternatives with better analytics. But in general they just layer above BBG,
they don't replace it.

------
thomasthomas
This podcast will shed some light on your query:
[http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/podcast-wall-streets-
just...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/podcast-wall-streets-just-one-big-
bloomberg-chat/)

 _“Bloomberg just wants you to be locked into the ecosystem and never, ever
leave. It’s like the Hotel California of financial data.” — Robin
Wigglesworth_

------
robtani
The depth and breadth of financial data along with excellent integration with
Excel is simply unmatched! I actually looked into alternatives a couple of
times and each time didn't find anything even close! There're a lot of rivals
though including Factset that have great products but nothing really comes
close to Bloomberg especially if you have to work with FI instruments.

------
james1071
Things might be different now, but Bloomberg used to be unique in what it
offered:fixed income price feeds, analytics, news feeds and messaging service
for market participants.

Another killer feature was that there were addins to excel spreadsheets.

Now, there are probably competing products, but Bloomberg has a large user
base who are very familiar with its product.

------
homero
[https://youtu.be/_juj1MIRJVE](https://youtu.be/_juj1MIRJVE)

------
jamez1
Dealers need bbg, the social network in bbg chat drives some network effects,
there's also a bit of tradition involved too. They tend to have less data
issues than most but there's plenty still there.

Analysts and research roles aren't so beholden but bbg does data well while
reuters does news well.

------
telecuda
My friends at Intrinio ([https://intrinio.com/](https://intrinio.com/)) here
in St. Pete FL are responding to this question with a lower-cost, developer-
friendly way to pull financial data into Excel, Google Sheets or your own
application.

------
juststeve
i think it's a locked down software system that provides near real time data
on in various financial markets around the world. the reason why this is
useful is alot of stock info you find online is 5 -15 minutes old.. which is
kind of useless if you need to buy and sell in realtime.

------
lawrencegs
Wow, great comments about Bloomberg. It makes me wonder, is there similar
system for Cryptocoins traders?

~~~
jackfrodo
This is a really interesting idea. Certainly, there's a huge need in the
cryptocurrency world with getting information accurately and in one place. And
it's only going to grow.

------
d--b
I'm a quant developer and have had Bloomberg terminal for years. Bloomberg has
a lot of different benefits.

1\. It is a all-in-one news source. There are a lot of features that allow you
to monitor the news from many different sources in real time.

2\. It is a social network. The built-in chat and email service is _really_
basic. But, just about every one working in Finance is on it, with their
contact details and resumes. As a trader, you can legally close financial
transactions on the Bloomberg chat, as one would over the phone.

3\. It is a data sharing platform. Banks and other market participants
contribute to Bloomberg data by sending information that is normally not
visible in the market. For instance FX volatilities are quoted by banks on
bloomberg in real time. This information is only available in few places.

4\. It is an API that allows its users to use its data for custom analytics.

5\. It is an execution platform, where you can book trades, follow their
values and risk when the market moves, etc.

6\. It is open to 3rd parties: some banks and other data vendors have their
own pages on bloomberg (which I never had access to).

7\. It has many many other stuffs. There is a restaurant review system. There
is a classified section. There are things to monitor the weather. It has
videos, maps, it's just huge.

Now - that is what people are interested in.

And then there are the things that Bloomberg shoves down your throat. Like the
keyboard.

Bloomberg _forces_ you to buy their keyboards, at a very heavy price. The
justification is the fingerprint reader, but that's really just a scam,
because they put a $10 fingerprint reader onto a $10 keyboard, and sell you
the thing at $500 a piece. So you either need to buy the keyboard, or you need
to buy the B-Unit, which is Bloomberg very 2-factor authentication device
which I assume is also quite expensive.

There is also the additional price you pay for API access, or to be able to
see very specialized data. You pay for your private circuit to their servers
(yep, it usually doesn't go through the internet).

Also a few words on the UI: it is f-ing terrible. Hit Escape, and you will
find yourself on the start page. It doesn't matter that you were in the middle
of typing an email or pricing a product, it just restarts your terminal. Most
of the features are accessed by obscure four letter codes, that one has to
learn to go back to. There is a search feature but everything is mixed in, and
so you have to be pretty lucky to find anything useful using that. After a
while though, the fact that the UI is so bad makes you feel "part of the
club", I think many people would hate it if it changed.

------
Marazan
It's not the terminal pet se, it's the information it is connected to.

------
pvitz
Does anyone here know how difficult it would be for BBL to change their GUI? I
am using the terminal quite often, but I wish it would be more EIKON like.

------
tommynicholas
It's not mostly news, it's mostly finance data that only Bloomberg has
aggregated. To get the data you have to buy the terminal.

------
ionwake
Is it possible to access the bloomberg terminal chat via some sort of api?

------
dustinkirkland
Try:

$ apt install wallstreet

$ wallstreet

I created that for Ubuntu, as a follow-on to:

$ apt install hollywood

$ hollywood

Purely for fun. Try it!

~~~
malberto
where's the source ? can't find it

~~~
eddyg
"wallstreet" is part of his "hollywood" project:
[https://github.com/dustinkirkland/hollywood/blob/master/bin/...](https://github.com/dustinkirkland/hollywood/blob/master/bin/wallstreet)

------
oriol16
If anybody is looking to disrupt the industry, I would be interested to
partner in.

~~~
hueving
Bloomberg would be very hard to dethrone. It's key selling point is all of the
data they have access to, which takes forever to setup integration with all of
those providers. They continually expand data sources as well so it's not like
they are asleep at the wheel.

Finally, Bloomberg chat has strong network effects so even if you had all of
the same data, many traders still wouldn't switch to you because they can't
communicate with others still on Bloomberg.

------
sentieo
By way of an introduction: My name is Alap Shah and I spent years as an
analyst at Viking and Citadel using Bloomberg and CapIQ in my day-to-day
workflow. 5 years ago, I left to begin building Sentieo, a modern financial
platform underpinned by deep search that incorporates the latest in web
technology.

My team of former buy-side analysts and engineers have built an advanced
research platform with search technology and data analytics designed to
significantly increase the speed and depth of your research process.

Sentieo aims to help accelerate fundamental investors' workflow by picking up
where traditional financial platforms leave off:

• Quickly search through public company documents: Sentieo’s Document Search
is the fastest and most powerful way to search through millions of SEC
filings, international filings, broker research, transcripts and
presentations.

• Effortlessly organize your research: Sentieo offers research management
seamlessly integrated at its core. The Sentieo Notebook is where your
investment ideas begin to take shape---analysts organize and develop their
ideas while allowing Portfolio Managers to monitor and influence the ongoing
development of an investment thesis.

• The financial data terminal reimagined: Sentieo offers a modern take on the
data terminal, with a sleek design that facilitates easy consumption of
relevant financial metrics, statements, charts and more. In addition, the
Excel plugin provides access to all of Sentieo’s datasets in Excel.

• A visualization engine built for analysts: Plotter, our powerful
visualization engine, allows you to create and track complex graphs for data
series across any number of tickers, with customizable financial metrics for
each ticker. In addition, Sentieo’s Mosaic tool adds a powerful additional
piece to your data mosaic: alternative data on web traffic, search interest,
and Twitter mentions. Seamlessly overlay that data against our financial
datasets to quickly identify the opportunities where data has predictive power
in forecasting unreported revenue and earnings growth. Our user interface
presents all of this data in a manner that’s easy to analyze.

• Sentieo's power in your pocket: Our suite of mobile apps enables intuitive
and fast access to the Sentieo platform while on the road (e.g. at investment
conferences and 1-on-1s). Integrated note-taking allows for collaboration with
others at your firm, with notes seamlessly syncing with our cloud servers once
your mobile device regains wireless Internet access.

After years of development, we launched just over a year ago and already have
200+ hedge funds and sell-side shops subscribed to our equity research
platform. Our team numbers nearly 100 strong across San Francisco, New York
and New Delhi.

I'd be more than glad to walk you through Sentieo, its unique features, and
our approach to being at the forefront of trends in:

• Financial search technology

• Research management systems (RMS)

• How funds are using a host of new datasets to generate Alpha via web
traffic, search volumes and twitter mentions

• Predictive analytic tools that allow analysts to make better forecasts of
business performance and to generate Alpha

Please feel free to visit our website is at www.sentieo.com to get a glimpse
of how we are re-imagining the financial data terminal and re-defining how
fintech can aid analysts in improving their workflow and generating investment
insights.

Cheers,

Alap

~~~
grzm
This comment seems kinda spammy (not to mention the fact that it's appeared
and reappeared at least 3 times so far). It would appear less so to me if it
were _much_ shorter and _much_ lighter on the marketing speak. Just a quick,
maybe 5 sentence introduction and a link would suffice.

