how a bloomberg terminal works
bloomberg terminals are one of the main product offerings from bloomberg l p they are one of the most heavily used and highly regarded professional investment systems to be created for the financial marketplace institutional investors are the typical customers of this product since the relatively high ongoing cost makes it unfeasible for individual investors with relatively small amounts of capital to purchase the system provides news price quotes and messaging across its proprietary secure network it is well known among the financial community for its black interface which is not optimized for user experience but has become a recognizable trait of the service it s not uncommon to see bloomberg s rather bland visuals carried into their television station although they round their media empire out with visually rich content in their flagship magazine bloomberg businessweek the approximate number of subscribers worldwide of the bloomberg terminal 1benefits of a bloomberg terminalthe bloomberg terminal was developed in 1982 by new york businessman michael bloomberg the terminal was originally a piece of dedicated all in one hardware for connecting to a network 3 now the terminal operates on any pc via windows compatible software a custom bloomberg keyboard and fingerprint scanner 1 based on design the system is compatible with the popular excel program a very important aspect of the system for those in the finance industry 4bloomberg also offers users access to the application online and through mobile devices via its bloomberg anywhere service 1 for portfolio managers and brokers having the ability to access real time market information from almost anywhere in the world is an incredibly convenient and important advantage of a bloomberg subscription bloomberg s instant messaging service has become popular among traders who use it to post quotes updates on trades and news about market activity the tools included in the bloomberg terminal are widely used by portfolio managers sell side finance professionals and buy side analysts bloomberg s data sets are comprehensive and quickly updated to reflect current market activity bloomberg s treasure trove of fixed income data appeals to bond traders 1bloomberg terminal competitorsthe largest competitor to the bloomberg s terminal is thomson reuters which started offering its reuters 3000 xtra electronic trading platform in 1999 5 then in 2010 they launched the eikon platform which officially replaced its predecessor in july 2012 67 in 2018 thomson reuters completed a deal with the private equity firm blackstone selling a 55 stake in the company for approximately 17 billion in gross cash proceeds 8bloomberg and thomson reuters split the market share in by 2010 each coming in at around one third of the market 9 in 2018 bloomberg s market share remained at around one third compared to thomson reuters drop to 22 market share 10 in 2018 thomson reuters sold its financial data and analysis platform to blackstone group under the rebranded name refinitiv and announced a renewed focus on enhancing the firm s flagship products the eikon desktop platform and the elektron data platform 11refinitiv was later sold to the london stock exchange lse group 12 bloomberg still commanded a one third market share as of 2022 with refinitiv holding its own at 19 the rivalry between bloomberg and its competitors continues as competitive pressure from smaller firms that offer financial data and analysis at a much lower price point two such firms are s p capital iq and factset the proliferation of big data analytics and machine learning look to cut into bloomberg s stranglehold on the financial data space 13can you trade directly from a bloomberg terminal yes you can place a wide range of order types and trade from the bloomberg terminal the bloomberg terminal can serve as a complete end to end trading system across a wide range of markets and financial products such as trading stocks and options 