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Isn’t community the single biggest advantage of Bloomberg Terminal? And no one is focusing on that, but on new fancy charts. That’s probably why Bloomberg doesn

by monkin 4y ago

Isn’t community the single biggest advantage of Bloomberg Terminal? And no one is focusing on that, but on new fancy charts. That’s probably why Bloomberg doesn’t have real competition.

Jorge1o1 4y ago
I would have to argue that while community is a huge part (a lot of trades get done over IB), the biggest advantage is actually data. Bloomberg has all sorts of connections with hundreds of different economic data providers and news orgs — including some they they own themselves. It’s crazy how you can get CPI prints at 8:30:00.001 because presumably they have some embargo arrangement with the FOMC. They have a corporate actions database with hundreds of thousands of mergers, dividends, minority stakes, etc. They have millions of news articles, hundreds of thousands of securities, symbology for all of it. And don’t even get me started on the alternative data in Bloomberg: weather data, maritime ship position, satellite maps, polling data, crypto prices, corporate hierarchies, holdings/investor data, millions of bios, etc. It’s an empire of data and it’s all in one place.
- wjnc 4y ago
  It’s lock on data as well. On the one hand I hear all the 20-30 year olds complaining about BB on a daily basis and on the other hand we have million dollar models (in cost, billion dollar in value) locked-in on BB data sources. Just changing a data source is a major model change with god knows what hoops the regulator puts you through. So I just kindly explain to the youngsters there is a lot we can do for their happiness, but switching from BB is not one. Writing this I think some consultancy could specialize in the BB API. That’s all we need.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    BB is an excellent and well-executed business model. 1. Do something that doesn't scale: provide clean, reliable feeds for everything + whatever new thing clients want 2. Package the above in a way that's easier to explain/sell: a device (and now, API) 3. Control the interface It establishes and grows a moat by 1. It eased sales and prevented competitors from stepping in between them and the customer (and therefore eventually being able to cut Bloomberg out) via 2 & 3. Consequently, it turns any potential competitor's value calculus into either (a) attempt to reimplement a subset of Bloomberg's offering, thus inviting the "Why not buy an integrated solution?" customer comparison and fighting against integrated pricing economies or (b) reimplement the entire Bloomberg offering from ground up, which is pretty much impossible. And the entire time a competitor is spending time and effort on (a) or (b), Bloomberg is collecting use patterns and new feature requests from its actual, day-to-day users.
    - apaprocki 4y ago
      … and shipping them daily :)
  - boppo1 4y ago
    Does the BB API have public documentation? Or is that behind the paywall?
    - jleahy 4y ago
      It’s public, there is also a good 3rd party wrapped on pypi that makes it much easier to use. https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/support/api-library/ https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/support/api-library/
- JackFr 4y ago
  They also have reference data on tens of thousands of bonds, and have correctly implemented bond math and risk analytics for these issues. As retail typically trade stocks and not bonds, retail traders miss what makes Bloomberg terminals indispensable for institutions. You cannot trade bonds without one.
  - infinite8s 4y ago
    In fact Bloomberg initially started as a bond calculator.
  - traceroute66 4y ago
    > You cannot trade bonds without one Yup. In a previous life I worked in the vicinity of someone who only occasionally traded corporate bonds. When that time of the month/quarter came up, they would do some limited research as best they could, but then ultimately the phone would be picked up to someone with a Bloomberg and the words "what does your Bloomberg say about X ?" uttered. They would only make their decision after that. Bloomberg have built themselves a truly solid moat when it comes to fixed-income data.
- sitzkrieg 4y ago
  yea, its worth mentioning IB has very good execution but very bad data, to the point paying for their "realtime" data (and unusable historical) is nearly an inside joke of spotting suckers.
  - collegeburner 4y ago
    can you elaborate on the bad data from IBKR? a few people mentioned looking at them for data sources but didn't bring up any quality issues. never used their data myself so can't say but i'm curious.
collegeburner 4y ago
yep it's social media for the street. where everyone keeps in touch on anything finance-related. hella network effects. (also they do have a ton of data and it's better than almost anyone else)
ckelly 4y ago
Yes, I’ve heard Michael Bloomberg say the secret weapon was adding chat, which built the network effect.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  How often do people reach out to random people? Don't people get tons of spam?
  - Spinnaker_ 4y ago
    I can't say there is no spam, but in 10 years of use I don't think I've personally seen any. "Random" people sometimes reach out, but it's usually for ok reasons. Spamming people is a very quick way to ruin your firm's reputation. And depending on what you do, there may be regulations against that type of stuff.
infinite8s 4y ago
Bloomberg is a 24k/yr private social network. That's what most if these low cost replacements don't get. There are network effects in play.
traceroute66 4y ago
> Isn’t community the single biggest advantage of Bloomberg Terminal? No. Calling Bloomberg a 24k/year chat box is doing Bloomberg a great disservice. The reason Bloomberg is 24k/year is because of the extensive global dataset. You can get everything from the latest on Apple to the latest on an obscure company in Mongolia. You can do extensive comparisons and analysis on a global basis. And the data is cleaned and standardised. So no concerns about messy dirty data that is often found in cheap or free options on the internet.
- c7b 4y ago
  I think you're giving them a bit too much credit on the international dimension there. For 'obscure' destinations, it can be hard to even get useable government bond yield statistics.
  - easytiger 4y ago
    i'd love to see what you consider an obscure destination
rmah 4y ago
Bloomberg's strength is the breadth of clean data available and the analytics tools that operate on that data. The clean part is important. I've worked on projects using data purchased (quite expensive, think $10,000's) from other sources that we still had to clean up.
c7b 4y ago
Their data is so good that organizations will definitely pay them just for that, just like they pay for other data vendors without social features too. It's a staple for research quants, but they often won't use it on a daily basis, there might even be just one terminal available for a whole team. How important those clients are for Bloomberg I don't know, but it shows that they have a lot more going for them than just network effects.

by monkin 4y ago

Isn’t community the single biggest advantage of Bloomberg Terminal? And no one is focusing on that, but on new fancy charts. That’s probably why Bloomberg doesn’t have real competition.

Jorge1o1 4y ago

I would have to argue that while community is a huge part (a lot of trades get done over IB), the biggest advantage is actually data. Bloomberg has all sorts of connections with hundreds of different economic data providers and news orgs — including some they they own themselves. It’s crazy how you can get CPI prints at 8:30:00.001 because presumably they have some embargo arrangement with the FOMC. They have a corporate actions database with hundreds of thousands of mergers, dividends, minority stakes, etc. They have millions of news articles, hundreds of thousands of securities, symbology for all of it. And don’t even get me started on the alternative data in Bloomberg: weather data, maritime ship position, satellite maps, polling data, crypto prices, corporate hierarchies, holdings/investor data, millions of bios, etc. It’s an empire of data and it’s all in one place.

wjnc 4y ago
It’s lock on data as well. On the one hand I hear all the 20-30 year olds complaining about BB on a daily basis and on the other hand we have million dollar models (in cost, billion dollar in value) locked-in on BB data sources. Just changing a data source is a major model change with god knows what hoops the regulator puts you through. So I just kindly explain to the youngsters there is a lot we can do for their happiness, but switching from BB is not one. Writing this I think some consultancy could specialize in the BB API. That’s all we need.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  BB is an excellent and well-executed business model. 1. Do something that doesn't scale: provide clean, reliable feeds for everything + whatever new thing clients want 2. Package the above in a way that's easier to explain/sell: a device (and now, API) 3. Control the interface It establishes and grows a moat by 1. It eased sales and prevented competitors from stepping in between them and the customer (and therefore eventually being able to cut Bloomberg out) via 2 & 3. Consequently, it turns any potential competitor's value calculus into either (a) attempt to reimplement a subset of Bloomberg's offering, thus inviting the "Why not buy an integrated solution?" customer comparison and fighting against integrated pricing economies or (b) reimplement the entire Bloomberg offering from ground up, which is pretty much impossible. And the entire time a competitor is spending time and effort on (a) or (b), Bloomberg is collecting use patterns and new feature requests from its actual, day-to-day users.
  - apaprocki 4y ago
    … and shipping them daily :)
- boppo1 4y ago
  Does the BB API have public documentation? Or is that behind the paywall?
  - jleahy 4y ago
    It’s public, there is also a good 3rd party wrapped on pypi that makes it much easier to use. https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/support/api-library/ https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/support/api-library/
JackFr 4y ago
They also have reference data on tens of thousands of bonds, and have correctly implemented bond math and risk analytics for these issues. As retail typically trade stocks and not bonds, retail traders miss what makes Bloomberg terminals indispensable for institutions. You cannot trade bonds without one.
- infinite8s 4y ago
  In fact Bloomberg initially started as a bond calculator.
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > You cannot trade bonds without one Yup. In a previous life I worked in the vicinity of someone who only occasionally traded corporate bonds. When that time of the month/quarter came up, they would do some limited research as best they could, but then ultimately the phone would be picked up to someone with a Bloomberg and the words "what does your Bloomberg say about X ?" uttered. They would only make their decision after that. Bloomberg have built themselves a truly solid moat when it comes to fixed-income data.
sitzkrieg 4y ago
yea, its worth mentioning IB has very good execution but very bad data, to the point paying for their "realtime" data (and unusable historical) is nearly an inside joke of spotting suckers.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  can you elaborate on the bad data from IBKR? a few people mentioned looking at them for data sources but didn't bring up any quality issues. never used their data myself so can't say but i'm curious.

collegeburner 4y ago

yep it's social media for the street. where everyone keeps in touch on anything finance-related. hella network effects. (also they do have a ton of data and it's better than almost anyone else)

ckelly 4y ago

Yes, I’ve heard Michael Bloomberg say the secret weapon was adding chat, which built the network effect.

ricardobayes 4y ago
How often do people reach out to random people? Don't people get tons of spam?
- Spinnaker_ 4y ago
  I can't say there is no spam, but in 10 years of use I don't think I've personally seen any. "Random" people sometimes reach out, but it's usually for ok reasons. Spamming people is a very quick way to ruin your firm's reputation. And depending on what you do, there may be regulations against that type of stuff.

infinite8s 4y ago

Bloomberg is a 24k/yr private social network. That's what most if these low cost replacements don't get. There are network effects in play.

traceroute66 4y ago

> Isn’t community the single biggest advantage of Bloomberg Terminal? No. Calling Bloomberg a 24k/year chat box is doing Bloomberg a great disservice. The reason Bloomberg is 24k/year is because of the extensive global dataset. You can get everything from the latest on Apple to the latest on an obscure company in Mongolia. You can do extensive comparisons and analysis on a global basis. And the data is cleaned and standardised. So no concerns about messy dirty data that is often found in cheap or free options on the internet.

c7b 4y ago
I think you're giving them a bit too much credit on the international dimension there. For 'obscure' destinations, it can be hard to even get useable government bond yield statistics.
- easytiger 4y ago
  i'd love to see what you consider an obscure destination

rmah 4y ago

Bloomberg's strength is the breadth of clean data available and the analytics tools that operate on that data. The clean part is important. I've worked on projects using data purchased (quite expensive, think $10,000's) from other sources that we still had to clean up.

c7b 4y ago

Their data is so good that organizations will definitely pay them just for that, just like they pay for other data vendors without social features too. It's a staple for research quants, but they often won't use it on a daily basis, there might even be just one terminal available for a whole team. How important those clients are for Bloomberg I don't know, but it shows that they have a lot more going for them than just network effects.