Bloomberg Terminal

A Bloomberg terminal, initially launched as The Market Master terminal, is a PC-based data processing system consisting of hardware and software elements. It is aimed at investors, and provides them with a wide range of functions, including fast access to the latest news, all the relevant and up-to-date financial data such as price quotes, instant messaging, and a possibility to trade directly through the terminal.

A Bloomberg terminal is one of the most well-known and acclaimed products of Bloomberg, LP, a privately held New York-based company, which is one of the largest and most influential financial news vendors in the world.

A Bloomberg terminal operates on a subscription basis, and an annual fee is relatively high in comparison with other companies, usually being within a range from about $20000 to $30000 per year depending on a type of subscription and its details. So, Bloomberg main clients are traditionally institutional investors and large organizations, though some discounts are available for universities which use the terminal for educational and scientific purposes.

Bloomberg Terminal main features

At its initial launch, the Bloomberg terminal was a hardware system, specifically designed to enable work with financial data, and over the course of years it has evolved into a comprehensive system including many features and possibilities. Nowadays, a Bloomberg terminal can be mostly described as a software system working on Windows-based personal computers, with its remaining hardware elements being a customized keyboard, scanners of fingerprints, and some optional tools not necessary for a sufficient use of the system.

The Bloomberg terminal is famous for a distinctive black interface. It hasn’t changed significantly over the years, thus being the hallmark of the system. Mainly due to it becoming iconic, the company doesn’t change its relatively old-fashioned style, despite turning to more vivid and modern visuals for its other projects.

In general, a Bloomberg terminal allows access to a proprietary secure network, within which a vast variety of options is available. Investors often use a Bloomberg terminal for financial research, evaluating market conditions, and technical analysis, as it gathers the latest data from more than 1000 resources and makes it easily available and prepared for assessing. Price quotes, up-to-date news, all significant market changes and recent activities are available via a Bloomberg terminal. It is compatible with Excel, easing the process of getting and sorting the necessary information, and it appears helpful for different kinds of market participants, regardless of their goals. A Bloomberg terminal is a convenient way to work in the market for both buying and selling, additionally being suitable for direct trading via its platform. It allows placing orders, or exercising a full procedure of trading stocks and options.

Instant messaging, including voice messaging, was added long ago as one of the terminal’s main functions, and, since then, it has also become a popular tool among the users.

Bloomberg Terminal alternatives and competitors

Bloomberg terminals are one of the most successful and popular products withing its sphere, but its costly prices are also well-known in the financial world, making them impractical to use for smaller individual investors. 

The Bloomberg terminal wasn’t actually the first system for financial analysis and trading, with the first steps in the area of market data were made by Thompson Reuters Corporation. Thompson Reuters is the largest competitor of the Bloomberg company, and for a long period of time those two companies held approximately equal market shares, with Thompson Reuters has leaned back to some degree over the recent years after their financial data and platform were purchased by Blackstone Group, and the platform went through rebranding.

Among other alternatives and competitors of the Bloomberg Terminal, such companies as FactSet and AlphaSense should be mentioned, as well as Refinitiv Eikon (which initially was the product of Thompson Reuters company mentioned above), considered to be one of the best alternative platforms. Some of said companies provide similar functions at lower costs, and might be found more applicable by individual investors.