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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?

#191

Post by rxm »

FabHK wrote: post #158
nommm-nommm wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example? Not that I don't believe you.

Ok, look at the Thai Baht exchange rate: http://finance.yahoo.com/quote/THB=X/?p=THB=X You see the graph on the right, it hovers around 30 USD/THB (that's 30 THB per USD, in somewhat confusing FX convention). Now click on 5Y, then click on 10Y, and compare. The 10Y graphs probably includes some wrong blip around 700, which is why the 10Y graph scale is from 0 to 750, and you just see a basically flat line displayed a…

Thanks for the example. What you just did is one of the hardest things to communicate about data. A casual user would never notice this. I find "data curation" doesn't always get the importance it deserves.

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

#192

Post by anonu »

hazard wrote: 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…

> It brings together a vast variety of otherwise extremely hard to find information.

I disagree that the information is hard to find. I think a lot of the data is publicly available. Bloomberg "normalizes" it for you and makes it easy and quick to access. As you point out, they have depth and breadth. And that is where the value lies.

Many people have tried to compete with Bloomberg. Millions and millions of dollars have been poured into competitor products. In my opinion, you will never be able to replace Bloomberg. The key, however, is to break up the functionality. Build a better graphing tool, a better chat app, a better financial analysis tool, a data API that plugs into Excel, Python, C++, etc... etc...

Also, the value offering of bbg goes beyond the terminal. For example, Bloomberg sells a lot of their "static" data in daily or hourly file updates (for $100Ks/year). They are the central hub for RFQs and IOIs. They also pour money into machine learning techniques to provide better/faster news. They sell their news firehose for top dollar and people will pay for it.

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

#193

Post by trelliscoded »

FabHK wrote: post #71
throwawayish wrote: post #63

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.

That would be LexisNexis.

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

#194

Post by trelliscoded »

praptak wrote: post #161
charles-salvia wrote: post #132

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?

I believe that the Silver Springs network in california is the largest in terms of nodes.

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

#195

Post by flukus »

pareidolia wrote: post #186
azernik wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gives me real hope is the insertion of vim modes into GUI editors. It lets me use languages that need IDE assistance to be practical (I'm looking at you , Scala), while still holding on to the Old Ways.

Have you looked at https://github.com/ensime/ensime-vim ?

Neither the github page or the website say what it is.

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

#196

Post by willstrafach »

venning wrote: post #177
praptak wrote: post #161

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

Minor correction: it technically is connected to NIPR ("the internet") via cross-domain guards. Most information would go one-way, low to high, but very specific applications do warrant information going from Secret to unclassified in a very controlled manner, especially when it is time sensitive.

It is actually an incredibly interesting topic, but it is hard to get much information on the specifics online (I assume many details are classified or at least SBU).

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

#197

Post by lordnacho »

kgwgk wrote: post #188
sah2ed wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say this? (FWIW, I find many of lordnacho's HN contributions to be decent and in many cases insightful).

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...

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...

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.

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

#198

Post by lefstathiou »

rpedela wrote: post #184
lefstathiou wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prob…

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

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.

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

#199

Post by MagnumOpus »

kanwisher wrote: post #85
brainrain wrote: post #62

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/

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.

> Bloomberg is the king, and if you don't have money you use Reuters

That is true for now. But chat is trivially implemented and the monopoly only holds due to network effects. And in the last few years Bloomberg have been so arrogant with all of their clients that there is critical momentum now to migrate away the chats and have everyone bar the actual traders share terminals.

(In unrelated news, Bloomberg's recent antics pissed our firm's senior guys off enough that made a few hundred Bbg terminal users migrate to Eikon, just to send a message...)

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

#200

Post by MagnumOpus »

arx1422 wrote: post #83

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…

> 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.

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