Does bloomberg terminal help?

[dividend]

bloomberg terminal has a huge amount of analytics that are very impressive, and probably very helpful to analysts at a bank, researchers, and academics... and can justify the costs.

but does this help at all for the independent shortterm trader trading stocks making 6 figures/yr.? for those traders paying for BT how do you justify the cost?

 

[Capital]

Of course it will help, but only if you can justify the cost.

 

[cmdtytrdr]

Mostly just convenience. You could get pretty much everything offered on BB from other sources and maybe save some money as the BB terminal monthly price is pretty steep, but you would have to have multiple vendor relationships and spend a lot of time digging through all the various other services. BB aggregates a lot of this for you.

For example, data mining and backtesting. You could buy data from other sources or find some free online, but bloomberg lets you easily download it into excel in an easy to use format to start prepping strategies based on your research.

Another example is getting headlines and economic data releases faster than digging through reuters, wsj, etc.

Also, BB has a pretty rich job posting section for finance professionals when you sign up for their service. Although, now you could probably find a lot of those jobs on linkedIn. Before linkedIn and probably somewhat even now, BB was a way for firms to look for serious applicants. It lets them separate the average wannabe who is looking for a finance job on monster from those who show some commitment and demonstrate some success simply by the fact that they can afford to spend about 2k a month for the service.

I probably sound like a BB shill. Truth is, it was probably a lot more worthwhile 10 years ago before the internet gave people an easy way to access so much information for free and so quickly.

 

[zdreg]

if it helps you to make loot it is cheap.

 

[tomdavis]

Quote from dividend:

how do you justify the cost?

Same way you justify any other trading cost -- ROI.

 

[Rodney King]

My favorite motto from Tim Ferriss is, "Replace Just In Case Learning With Just In Time Learning." In this case, figure out BBG once it's clear your use-case requires it -- for instance, if you've just left a converts shop and are setting up your own group. Use the tools you need, given your edge -- but figure out your edge first. There are so many threads on ET that get it backwards -- arguing about fine points of computer hardware/software/languages/IDEs, without any understanding of what market edge, if any, is available to exploit. As if buying a Steinway makes you into a brilliant pianist.

 

[zdreg]

" As if buying a Steinway makes you into a brilliant pianist."

Quote from zdreg:

if you had bought steinway stock it would have made you a brilliant investor.