By, Gloria Liu
Weeks ago I wrote an introduction to Bloomberg Terminal on Empowerment Day. This article explores more in-depth about it.
It costs $2,000 a month to use one Bloomberg Terminal computer. Quite a commitment for a student, so many of us, no matter how much you love finance, would probably say I’d pass. Now for those who haven’t heard about Bloomberg Terminal yet, or have heard but haven’t used yet, you can get hands on practice with the state-of-art tool here at school.
In fact, on Tuesday October 28, Samuel Bergen, Bloomberg Rep from San Francisco office gave students an introduction about the terminal. During that one-hour session, Samuel walked us through different functions of the terminal like: –
- How to do company/ portfolio research quoting GE as an example.
- How to use Excel plug-in within the terminal.
But the fastest way to get familiar with the terminal is to explore the terminal by ourselves. So I did the same.
Time: 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Location: IBIC Bloomberg Terminal Room
Priority: To students who have scheduled the Bloomberg Terminal room
We have only one terminal at campus, so reservation is highly recommended. I logged into the system, read the instructions carefully, and waited for about five minutes for Bloomberg Terminal to get connected to the Internet. Here’s how Bloomberg terminal looks like: a colorful keyboard, two screens, and a help telephone.
Courtesy: Gloria Liu
As a first time user of the terminal, I decided to go through all the video tutorials in the system. There are around ten videos which run for about two to three hours. And there are quizzes for which if you pass above 70%, you are eligible to request for a confirmation from Bloomberg efficiency. I watched 2 videos, and I consider them to be helpful. Those videos introduce the functions of different colors in the keyboard and list some special acronyms for shortcuts. But by merely watching the video, it does not help so much, as most of the shortcuts look similar. To me, the only way to memorize them is to use the terminal.
With the help of David J Roman, first year MBA student, I finally got some insights about the terminal, seeing its multiple functionalities. For example, if I want to look into a company’s financials, whether public or private, I can type TK go, and then type the company name, and the screen will display the results for me. The screen is further divided into a couple of sections, each showing different stocks & prices in graphs, company news and etc. By clicking on the insider shareholders tab, I get the information about the CEOs, VPs, and other senior managers, with their direct contact phones and email addresses. And the last thing that I found about the terminal is that you can actually upload your resume and search for jobs there. So I will definitely go back to the terminal room more often.
Courtesy: Gloria Liu
* Bloomberg Aptitude Test (BAT)
The BAT is a global standardized online exam that assesses your abilities as a critical thinker across a variety of competencies. It then enables you to showcase your strengths relative to thousands of other test takers to 25K+ recruiters at elite global investment and financial institutions. More information can be found at about.bloomberginstitute.com.