Yeah... people aren't paying Bloomberg $31,980 per year for a TUI. They're paying for the data source... and I don't think you have Bloomberg's connections.
1) Bloomberg was lightyears ahead of anything else in the pre-internet days, so there's a lot of UI familiarity.
2) Bloomberg's chat is important because, as a hedge fund or investment bank, the chat is how you buy and sell bonds. You agree to the trade in the chat, then tell the back office folks to execute the trade. Direct quote: "I'd wager 90% of the ~400 trillion in annual bond trading value happens over Bloomberg DM"
3) Bloomberg is the biggest and best aggregator
You’re thinking of investment banking, corporate finance. Trading has always been the place folks from less privileged backgrounds got into finance. In the old days, Jews. (Like, into the 50s.) In the 80s, poor schmucks.
I’m not in the trading world though so I haven’t met the ones that don’t fit this description.
But exactly zero of the people I know who were raised in either poverty or mediocrity are traders or involved in finance, aside from maybe accounting.
Of course, this is all anecdotal - but I’ve only ever seen Bloomberg terminals outside of office settings in the apartments of wealthy children.
Perhaps things were a bit different decades ago, in the scrappy past, but it feels like most higher earning spheres are closing in around pre-existing wealth.
I was. Algorithmic derivatives. The rich kids went into banking. Their connections bought deal flow. Those of us from public universities mostly went into trading. It’s why it’s been looked down on within Wall Street since basically ever.
> I’ve only ever seen Bloomberg terminals outside of office settings in the apartments of wealthy children
Parents buying their kids Bloomberg terminals aren’t looking for them to get into trading, they’re training them to start a hedge fund.
(I’d also guess a minority of folks with a BB are traders. It’s really more of a vetted calling card.)
That has changed in the last 20 years or so but only because those jobs have effectively gone away. They are the factory jobs of the finance world. They succumbed to the automation impulse that started in the 80s and reached its zenith in the early 2010s. Traders basically don't exist anymore, a computer can do the job much more effectively. So much so that I was shocked when I _encountered_ a real live trading desk as part of a recent job move.
Trading can bring down a bank (e.g.Barings) but is not a big systemic risk.
I am not making this up.
There were custom frontends that would enrich things like cusips.
Anyone else old enough to remember scripting a tradebot in Asheron's Call?
Used Trello a lot before it got sold to, and damaged by contact with, Atlassian. FogBugz looked cool…but I had to use an old version of Bugzilla.
I didn't know Glitch existed until this site had a notice that it Glitch would be shutting down. Surprised me FCS had anything to do with a game, and seems it wasn't a good fit. I like the style though, and downloaded some of the art and variations on the Groddle theme before it died.
The dedicated fiber drop was most likely for reliability, not for latency.
What's the equivalent of hacker news for financial folk?
I have never used bloomberg but my understanding is it has history, network effects and great data.
The data is ultimately the problem with any project like this. Data is not cheap for personal use. For redistribution in a commercial product, it is really a huge bottleneck to get anything off the ground.
This just looks like the standard , useless, retail trading software IMO.
A few examples:
1. As a researcher, you can develop indexes and portfolios, then make those available to customers via bbg
2. Goldman has a service that let's you buy equities via SWAPs, if a fund can't hold said equities for regulatory or operational reasons. The whole service is a series of menus within the terminal.
3. Many brokers offer automatic trading services like "sell this notional but do it very slowly" etc etc... they do that via bbg
Yup.
If you want fixed-income data, Bloomberg is the only shop on the street data-wise.
If you want other financial data, Bloomberg's fixed entry-point pricing tends to make more sense in terms of bang for buck than its competitors modular price sheets.
People saying Bloomberg is just about the chat are simply embarrassing themselves.
Look at the price sheets of Eikon, Factset, CapIQ etc. There is no such thing as a cheap "Bloomberg killer".
Quality data is expensive. So are the leased-lines it arrives at Bloomberg on. So is the data wrangling architecture.
The exchange/marketplace is the oldest business in the world. How absurd that in 2026 seats on exchanges cost millions and the entities that control exchanges are mechanisms of gatekeeping rather than quality control -- the cronyism shown to SpaceX reveals just how corrupt it's become.
That freedom is actually why it's hard to create a Bloomberg competitor - in order to provide their data stream, Bloomberg has to have partnerships with hundreds of companies worldwide who run exchanges for stocks, bonds and other instruments. If exchanges were government-controlled rather than free-market, there would be more centralization and getting the data together would be easier.
Not really true. I can't just start a stock exchange. I need to comply with a bazillion regulations. Then I need a license, which I won't get.
As much as the crypto space is disliked, it also showed what happens when regulation isn't stopping you. Exchanges would pop up and anyone could create one. You didn't have to be already wealthy, a spin off from a hedge fund, a connected family, a connected person. You could just do it, and if it was good enough, people would trade on your venue.
Then, probably correctly, regulation came, and now that is all gone. The little person can't do that any longer, it is now reserved for the elites again.
There is a lot of regulatory capture in the financia sector, but that does not in imply that no regulation is necessary at all
We keep seeing hundreds of Bloomberg competitors mimicking the interface and they always forget that the chat (with the connections), data and the newsroom are the reasons why Bloomberg's network effect is close to impossible to break.
Using the Bloomberg Terminal is taught very early at colleges for any finance professional, which is how they get them as well.
(I’d especially love to see some federated social feature built in!)
An example that comes to mind is JSON5. People have a visceral reaction to the name, it sounds like it's trying to be HTML4.01 -> 5 but for JSON. In reality, it has its uses but doesn't supersede JSON whatsoever. The name itself has given it a bad rap though.
If you pick a name like "Gloomberb" the most obvious interpretation is that it's a Bloomberg alternative.
Financial information should be free for everyone.
Making a bad trade or missing a good one due to delaying data or bad data can pay for several years worth of bloombergs for everyone in your firm in one moment.
> 2) Bloomberg's chat is important because, as a hedge fund or investment bank, the chat is how you buy and sell bonds. You agree to the trade in the chat, then tell the back office folks to execute the trade. Direct quote: "I'd wager 90% of the ~400 trillion in annual bond trading value happens over Bloomberg DM"
You may discuss trades via SMS or Slack; maybe you're important enough that you have a broker, and you send them your idea. But the broker at the investment bank is probably handling those trades via Blomberg terminal. That's the network effect: all the bankers are in Bloomberg chat, and it is therefore the easiest place to find who owns an asset and negotiate a trade.
There is not a single reason for Bloomberg’s dominance but the one feature that keeps people on it is the chat.