Comment by princeb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by princeb | Hacker News Reader

it's everything:

- news articles

- squawk

- economic data releases

- historical and live market data

- asset pricing

- charts and analytics

- click trading

- trade execution and transaction cost analysis

- trade order management and post trade processing

- portfolio and risk management

- alerts

- chat

- mail

- Excel integration

- amazing stuff like DINE<GO>, FLY<GO>, and POSH<GO> (lol)

there's probably a ton more stuff that i don't use and don't know. bloomberg is a mile wide and a mile deep in some areas.

you can get any of these features individually from plenty of service providers in the market. some are less specialized and cheaper and some are more specialized and more expensive. if you don't want to manage fifty different contracts with different service providers bloomberg provides a one-stop shop.

bloomberg is more than just data now. it wants to be absolutely everything that a financial firm needs - front office, middle office, back office.

> DINE<GO>, FLY<GO>, and POSH<GO>

Can you ... can you order takeout from a Bloomberg terminal?

bloomberg has a history of muscling in on post-trade services with various degrees of success.

I doubt food delivery falls within their expertise or even scope of compliance, in the same way you still can't buy flight tickets from fly<go>, but if they want to do it, if they ever do, seamless has no choice but to take them seriously.

"FLY and DINE give you flight schedules and restaurant listings and reviews."

"POSH, a Craigslist for the wealthy"

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-coolest-functions-on-Bloo...

Banking software also use this type of codes to reach different functions: post a cheque, take a draft, print an account statement, update customer record, loan balance/amortisation/payback history; in short, they do everything with short 3-4-5 letter keywords. This type of system has very high learning curve ("Hey Alex, what's the keyword for locker rent arrears list?"); but it is a joy to watch competent people operate the program to get things done.

Many business software also work this way (SAP ERP/Oracle Financials), but none of them are likely to be as fast as Bloomberg though. AutoCAD also has some commands like this (like Emacs'/Vim's ex/M-x prompt? ":"/"M-x"). I wish other consumer software also allowed access to screens/dialog boxes and functions in this direct manner without having to click menus and buttons a thousand times.

>Can you ... can you order takeout from a Bloomberg terminal?

Almost. You can ask the helpdesk, and get decent answers along the lines of a telephone number for a restaurant but not 'this place is recommended'

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