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Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

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171–180 of 232 posts

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

#171

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.

An alternative for who? Certainly not professionals.

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

#172
post #110

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…

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

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.

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

#173
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sen…

Bloomberg delivers financial information, not information on every individual.

There are other companies that specialize in collecting information on every individual.

For example:

https://youtu.be/f86VKjFSMJE?t=23m45s

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

#174

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 functio…

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?

IDK, I can't help but wonder if this is the result of everyone else moving to more modern standards and leveraging shared infrastructure while the Bloomberg folks double down on a legacy architecture.

I could buy largest private financial network, but it's hard to verify a claim like this when the Chinese network behind the great firewall could be considered a private network (measuring by the intent rather than the implementation).

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

#175

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

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.

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

#176
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you feel that way about generic text or code in particular? I haven't seen Intellisense or project templating for, say, F# at the same level as a VS Code. Does this exist? I'd love to move more to Vim!

Well, except vscode is behind vs for F#. Try using a type provider on vscode, it runs like crap for anything non trivial.

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

#177

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 functio…

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?

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

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

#178
post #11

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…

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 familiar…

> 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..)

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

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.

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

#180
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.

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