Bloomberg is a global financial database, which is heavily used in both academic and professional settings. Use Bloomberg to find nearly any type of financial data, including equities, fixed income, indices, commodities, currencies, and more. Bloomberg has data on more than 5 million bonds, equities, commodities, currencies & funds. If a company is publicly traded, Bloomberg will have some information on it. Also included are profiles of over a million people. This guide explains how to create your account, and provides some information on getting started using the service.
The Bloomberg Terminal revolutionized an industry by bringing transparency to financial markets. More than four decades on, it remains at the cutting edge of innovation and information delivery — with fast access to news, data, unique insight and trading tools helping leading decision makers turn knowledge into action.
Bloomberg must be used at the terminal; there is no remote access.
We have 13 terminals across 2 locations:
To request Bloomberg username and password, please contact the Library Information Desk. You first log in to the computer with your usual OzU username and password. You'll then need to use given Bloomberg username and password.
Bloomberg allows customized downloading to Excel. To access, the first time you must download the Excel add-in to the particular station you are using in the Library. Then use the standard Bloomberg functionality by going to Import Data > Real-Time / Historical > Historical End of Day.
An alternative and more flexible method is to create Bloomberg formulas in Excel yourself. You can augment the number of data fields available from the aforementioned Import Data function by instead creating formulas directly in Excel, as follows:
To find data for a single field for a single security, position =BDP(A2,B1) in B2, where A2 contains the security and B1 the field mnemonic.
To find data for multiple fields for a single security, position =BDP($A2,B$1) in B2, where A2 contains the security and B1 and across the field mnemonics. Then drag the lower right corner of B2 across all cells in the row to be populated.
To find data for multiple fields for multiple securities, position =BDP($A2,B$1) in B2, where A2 and down contain the securities and B1 and across contain the field mnemonics. Then drag the lower right corner of B2 down and across diagonally, to populate the columns and rows.
The list of field mnemonics is found using the Find Fields function.
Bloomberg terminals have specialised keyboards with shortcut keys for commonly used functions.
Red keys -- used to login or logout of the system. You can only be logged into one terminal at a time.
Black keys -- used to enter tickers, function codes, search terms, date ranges, et cetera.
Yellow market keys -- used to tell Bloomberg in what market you want to look e.g. equities, commodities, etc.
Green keys -- used to make Bloomberg actually do something. You can type in the ticker for a security and hit the correct market key, but if you do not hit the green <GO> button Bloomberg will not do anything.
Typically when using Bloomberg, your command might look something like this: TICKER <MARKET> FUNCTION CODE <GO>
Bloomberg Certificates (BCER) is a self-paced e-learning course that provides an interactive introduction to the financial markets. BCER consists of 8 sections — Core Concepts includes four modules – Economic Indicators, Currencies, Fixed Income, Equities. Other modules are Getting Started on the Terminal, Portfolio Management, Stock Option and Commodities. The sections are woven together from Bloomberg data, news, analytics and television.
Bloomberg Market Concepts requires all users to have individual accounts. To create an account, go to Bloomberg terminal in the Library and follow the steps below;
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.
To request help from a librarian, contact us and we would be happy to assist you.
Bloomberg has lots of cheat sheets and tips - type BU <GO> on the terminal to access.