How To: Bloomberg Terminal: Home

• The Libraries' Bloomberg terminal is located in Bartle Library, on the first floor, in the Government Documents Room.  This room is at the end of the Reference area, to the far left of the Bartle Research Help Desk. There are other Bloomberg terminals available in the Zurack Trading Room of the School of Management, but these terminals are restricted to Management students and faculty.
• You will need to register (create an account) the first time that you use the terminal.  Registration is easy, but may take up to ten minutes or so.  Be sure to have a cell phone, as the company will text you a password during the registration. Use of the terminal is restricted to Binghamton University students, faculty and staff. Your registration can be used on any of the Bloomberg terminals on campus.
• The Bloomberg terminal is extremely popular during the Fall and Spring semesters.  There is a reservation system for the terminal if you want to assure yourself a specific time period.

Bloomberg has data on more than 5 million bonds, equities, commodities, currencies, and funds. It covers most every publicly traded company in the world, and has profiles on more than a million people.

Navigation in Bloomberg is via a decentralized, command driven system. Securities are organized by market silos and can be access via drilling down a series of menus or by entering a command. Commands to retrieve information are represented by codes. 

Being a decentralized database, there are three things to keep in mind:

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• Hierarchical nature of information, but not "main" menu.

• Each market is its own "silo."

• With use of a command, you can jump from silo to silo.

With more than 25,000 codes, the key to becoming an expert Bloomberg user is to

• Memorize the codes you use most often and
• Know how to get help in Bloomberg to find new codes.

Learning how to put a command together in Bloomberg is similar to learning another language.  The example below provides the basic structure of a command.

These functions provide a market level view or are not tied to one specific security. Because of this, you do not use a yellow market key with them. For example, WEI <GO> will take you directly to a listing of major indices worldwide. 

Take a look at BHL <GO> for Bloomberg Help and Learning to discover the newest functions and guides. 

 Bloomberg help is available via email. Hit the green < HELP > key twice and a window will open with an option to type in your question and send it to a Bloomberg support specialist.

The news feeds in Bloomberg are one of its most popular features.

TOP < GO > - to get to the top news screen. From here you can specify what kind of news items you want to view.
READ < GO > - to view the most popular news stories on bloomberg.
CN - to view company news. For example JNJ < EQUITY > CN < GO >

Click on the headline to view a story. You can also email or download the stories.