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Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

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Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#32

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#33

Post by trelliscoded »

seesomesense wrote: post #26
trelliscoded wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I answer questions about oil tanker availability? I don't see anything in the manual about that. I guess it might be under BMAP or BI, but nothing obvious stands out to me...

Shipping Markets SHIP Shipping functions menu VSRC Vessel search VSTK Vessel capacity data FLET Aggregated fleet data FIXS Research daily global tanker fixtures BFX Baltic freight index BMAP Generate energy-related maps

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#34

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#35

Post by 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...

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#36

Post by ribs »

unixhero wrote: post #34

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#38

Post by malberto »

nostrademons wrote: post #2

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 befor…

During an interview they told me back in the days the state of the art was delivery boys running between wall street and banks and other firms with (often unlabeled) paper notes... and that was as "real time" as you could get

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#39

Post by peteretep »

afeezaziz wrote: post #6
tezza wrote: post #5

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

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.

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

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#40

Post by kkkrist »

heisenbit wrote: post #22
urs2102 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great relative comparison as far as the keyboard goes is something like vi/vim or even QWERTY. I'm sure you could have better text editing shortcuts (power Sublime/Atom users maybe), or a better keyboard (Dvorak for example), but once people do things a certain way and develop proficiency, it's often tough to change.

That is a powerful moat. Vi users or Emacs users may die out at one point in time but they are unlikely to switch in larger numbers.

I have gone from Textmate to Sublime to Atom and finally took the time to properly learn vi. vi has made my typing so vastly more efficient that I can't imagine to ever use anything else again.

I guess you have never really used vi to make such a comparison, same as op has probably never used the Bloomberg Terminal.

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