Is A Bloomberg Terminal Worth It?

[vincentnyc]

A simple question with I'm sure a not so simple answer...

Does anybody in here have a terminal they use regularly? If so, do you think it's "worth it"?

What does it do that cant be done otherwise? For the immense success of Bloomberg LP, id have to think this thing does a lot.

Thanks

the way you asking this question lead me to believe you don't need it. i do IT support for a trade floor that do fix income trading like MBS and ppl like them use bloomberg with excel spreadsheet.

 

[newwurldmn]

A simple question with I'm sure a not so simple answer...

Does anybody in here have a terminal they use regularly? If so, do you think it's "worth it"?

What does it do that cant be done otherwise? For the immense success of Bloomberg LP, id have to think this thing does a lot.

Thanks

Whose going to be paying for a bloomberg terminal out of their own pocket and say it's not worth it?

I pay for one. I use it because while i can get the data from other places, it would be a lot more time consuming and difficult to integrate. The time I save, allows me to scale my efforts more effectively. For me the 30k is well worth that. But my notionals are much higher than an average retail account (though smaller than an institutional account) and so time/$ is more valuable for me.

 

[murray t turtle]

Worth if you trade in the millions. Otherwise, you better have a very good strategy that makes use of it.

%%
Sounds like its worth it;
if fixed income + a bank. Even though one Bloomberg salesman could make an error; he said his sales [leases]are to banks + no stock traders...............................................Ex CEO of MCD says those MCD tear downs to the ground most likely will not pay for themselves, but they do it anyway.

 

[trismes]

Take a look at Refinitiv Eikon their main competitor. You can get Xenith (which is their retail version) for peanuts, and depending on what you're looking for, has a lot of the same functionality. Charting sucks balls; they've just had to buy in Trading View to upgrade theirs, there's no messaging for retail version but it covers a hell of a lot of bases.
But similarly you need to know why you need it though before you get it, same as BB.

 

[xandman]

Oh, charting bond funds based on Total Return is a godsend for comparing to non-income generating assets.

Looking at a long term stock chart of an income etf is just plain useless. WHy the heck doesn't anybody provide that on free charting sites.

BBG was built for bond traders, initially.

 

[MoreLeverage]

Looking at a long term stock chart of an income etf is just plain useless. WHy the heck doesn't anybody provide that on free charting sites.

Morningstar used to do total return comparisons for mutual funds, including dividend reinvestment. If you used a mutual fund as the primary ticker for the chart, you could compare it to stocks, ETFs, etc, and get similar total return charts even if they wouldn’t have included dividends for those if they were the primary ticker.

 

[ph1l]

Looking at a long term stock chart of an income etf is just plain useless. WHy the heck doesn't anybody provide that on free charting sites.

barchart.com lets you show prices adjusted for dividends (splits are automatically shown).

 

[tallguy]

if you want to pay for a terminal then check out pro.benzinga.com but like everyone else said - know why you need it before you get it

 

[JonLivingston]

I was trying to find some opinions on whether a subscription to Bloomberg news is worth it and landed here, read the replies and wanted to join in on the fun...

My criticism as someone who is deeply fundamental from an analytical process:
- that website sucks! Where’s the quarterly data? And why is it standardized? I need to be able to make my own adjustments or follow the adjusted process a firm takes, not a pre-canned one from Refinitiv etc.
- where’s the estimate data?! Stock prices trade based upon their future earnings — historicals are just a comparison (& not very useful)
- where’s granular consensus items? I need to know what the street expects Apple to print at the iPhone unit/volumes level
- where’s the research? (True you need to link with your sales coverage or brokers) I want to read equity research so i can list all the arguments from all of the major banks
- where are the chat rooms (yes you need sales coverage turned on from your brokers) to ask industry experts, sales coverage, etc., detailed questions?
- is there an excel plugin?
- can I also cross examine against economic data? (In-app run a regression of retail sales vs Macys revenue?)
- etc.

As a software engineer, I am pretty sure this was made by another software engineer and boy if we SUCK at making user interfaces! I quite agree the UI is bad lol. There are many assumptions being made there..

Imagine the tedium of scraping industry/gov sites for data.

I can confirm the tedium is real.

 

[murray t turtle]

the way you asking this question lead me to believe you don't need it. i do IT support for a trade floor that do fix income trading.......

THAT's what the Bloomberg salesman noted also, but he was a friend;
but he never noted pig trends\
or tulip trends\ so depends on what a trader wants.
barchart.com has some good turtle channels, but inaccurate volume.