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.).
Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
61–70 of 232 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
#62Interesting 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/
Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
#63It 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…
Oh. I'm European and I always wondered why in practically every American criminal-spy-scifi-investigative-themed TV show or movie there are people sitting at magical, proprietary computers able to find strange pieces of (personal) information in no time (but obviously always complex to use, because other characters don't know how).
I didn't know about the "Bloomberg Terminal" before, but now that makes a lot more sense where that idea comes from.
Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
#64If anybody is looking to disrupt the industry, I would be interested to partner in.
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.
Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
#65It 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…
Related question: What makes all this information hard to find and how do they do it? I wonder if there can be an alternative interface which will collate all this information? Like OP, I've also been curious about the Bloomberg Terminal and all the information that one supposedly has access to when using it. If nothing else, just to satisfy my curiosity, I'd love to poke around on such a system once.
The main part is not purely interface but the aggregation of data - integration with thousands of various systems, licencing agreements with thousands of proprietary data sources, automated and manual data cleanup. This isn't scalable and simply requires thousands of people and lots of work, because obtaining ocean tanker data doesn't really help you get integration for e.g. Nigerian mining industry data.
Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
#66UCF 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
> 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.
> 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.
Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
#67Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
#68315,000 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...
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.
Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
#69I 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/ seems to be such a potential newcomer, especially considering the much more reasonable price point and the use of current technology.
Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
#70It 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…
So its like a proprietary google. Google incentivizes people to put their information publicly so they can crawl it, bloomberg gathers the info for a price. I see the two as complementary-but-future-competitors.