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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.
by u8 1mo ago
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.
- sakimonkey 1mo agoit's a GUI and a TUI, pay attention to the screenshots
- passivegains 1mo agoDoes the GUI have Bloomberg's data source?
- mushufasa 1mo agoCorrect. Also, Bloomberg has messaging for traders that is actually an important network effect in certain domains.
- hmokiguess 1mo agoCan you elaborate on the network effect piece? Curious about that
- lesam 1mo agoIt's really useful to have a chat app that is gatekept behind a 20k/year+ subscription. It's a particularly useful signal if someone is offering you a million+ dollar asset for sale.
- hmokiguess 1mo agoI get that, was more curious if you knew how much that is used for signaling and the traffic there. I sort of expected these communities to exist in other sources (like regular SMS / Slack / private back channels etc).
- brendoelfrendo 1mo agoI'm going to copy-paste one of the comments from ryukoposting higher up in the thread because I think it's relevant here: > 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.
- hmokiguess 1mo agoThank you, that was the piece I wasn't aware of! Appreciate the reposting.
- kortilla 1mo agoSame effect as a country club. You know a lot about the person you’re talking to just based on their presence.
- hmokiguess 1mo agoThat's a cool way of putting it, thank you!
- Bluestein 1mo ago(Or you can get an [un-]Truth [a-]Social API subscription and know before everyone else!) /s
- quickthrowman 1mo agoSome assets are traded OTC aka “in a chat window”.
- rvz 1mo ago> They're paying for the data source... and I don't think you have Bloomberg's connections. 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.
- hmokiguess 1mo agoIs it still though? I have a few finance friends and they all seem to be on TradingView these days
- quickthrowman 1mo agoAre they trading bonds, equities, credit default swaps, options, , etc in large dollar amounts? “Finance” is pretty broad, Bloomberg is for traders and I-bankers afaict.
- notpushkin 1mo agoI think it is more oriented towards retail investors (if anybody) than professional users. In theory it could compete with TradingView? (I’d especially love to see some federated social feature built in!)
- devin 1mo agoTo be fair, I don't see anywhere on this page where they try to suggest that this is competitive with a Bloomberg terminal.
- croes 1mo agoThe name
- NDlurker 1mo agoInspired by and competing with are different things
- pverheggen 1mo agoWell yes, but a lot of people immediately jump to conclusions based on name alone, it's human nature. Definitely something to consider when you're picking a name for a project. 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.
- wnmurphy 1mo agoSeriously. I see a cool product that someone built and is sharing with the community, and the top comment is basically a criticism that it's not a $31k terminal.
- dpmartinez 1mo agoIt is almost like they want to be ripped off, the massive amount of gatekeeping is bizzare. Financial information should be free for everyone.
- deadbabe 1mo ago
- theodric 1mo agoSome of us are just here for the æsthetics! Plus I already have the SEA100 "Centerboard" with chrome accents, and this will help complete the look.
- d--b 1mo agoactually a lot of data is not included in the standard bloomberg license and you have to pay extra (mostly passing through to the data vendors) to get access to it. There is not a single reason for Bloomberg’s dominance but the one feature that keeps people on it is the chat.
- jimmydddd 1mo agoFinancial companies are cutting down on the amount associates can bill the firm for a $30 dinner, and the time before they can have the firm pay for a $30 car ride home. They definitely wouldn't pay for Bloomberg if it could be easily replaced.
- jpfromlondon 1mo agoNobody ever got fired for choosing Bloomberg, even if there was a viable alternative there is no way anyone is pioneering the switch.
- rmah 1mo agoBloomberg terminal is only $133/day (assuming 240 work days per year). So, while $32k/yr seems expensive at first glance, given the total annual cost of an analyst or trader, it's not huge. Of course, they'd rather not spend the $32k/yr if they could avoid it, if bloomberg can give you an edge on just one or two trades a year, you come out ahead. So...
- toomuchtodo 1mo agoI bet its cheaper than tokens for software development with higher ROI.
- forshaper 1mo agoI can say companies with less than 20 mil arr pay around $150k a year for saas and others (sometimes the same) also pay 50k a year for a niche agent harness.
- adjejmxbdjdn 1mo agoSkipping a dinner is not losing you much money. 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.
- handwarmers 1mo agodoes the author claim to be a bloomberg clone?
- ryukoposting 1mo agoAsked a dear friend in the finance industry what he thought about Bloomberg. He's the type of guy who uses these systems daily. Mostly paraphrasing: 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 This is fascinating to be because I always assumed latency was the key. After all, the only Bloomberg terminal I've ever seen in person was hooked up to its own dedicated fiber drop. It seems like the chat and sheer breadth of data are the differentiators.
- tikhonj 1mo agoBloomberg is big enough that different aspects of the system are going to be absolutely key for substantial subsets of its customers.
- steveBK123 1mo agoYes its a multi-decade long-tail of thousands and thousands of use cases all used in different combinations by different users.
- Terr_ 1mo agoHence quips like: "Most customers only use 10% of your features, but every customer uses a different 10%."
- akk0 1mo agoPtuh, call me back when Bloomberg implements spacebar heating!
- mattnewton 1mo agoTIL Bloomberg terminal is the original iMessage blue bubbles network
- rdiddly 1mo agoGood thing they're not asking $31,980 per year for it then?
- traceroute66 1mo ago> They're paying for the data source 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.
- dpmartinez 1mo agoThis is what is wrong with the world today.
- seanclayton 1mo agoThey're too busy dealing with their fake life problems to think about their impact on the world.
- resters 1mo agoIt's a bit ironic that in a country with free markets, so much of the data that is relevant to modern finance is proprietary and quite expensive. 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.
- wavemode 1mo agoA stock exchange is nothing more than a marketplace. Anyone can start their own (the challenge being, getting a bunch of companies to want to list their stock with you). 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.
- minimaltom 1mo agoI mean look at the name... this seems more like a fun quip than a product. I'm over here basking in the glow of dem vibes.
- dist-epoch 1mo agoMany people pay the Bloomberg Terminal subscription ONLY for the chat. They don't use anything else from it.
- storus 1mo agoCan't you just use a bunch of agents to extract financial statements from company websites the moment they are published? OK, no insider info but you can still do quick agentic fundamental analysis and decide which companies are interesting.
- nemomarx 1mo agoIf fundamentals matter for stock performance, sure yeah. I would be interested to see the results of trying that against the kinda alpha wall street uses usually
- storus 1mo agoSome folks do fundamental analysis, some do technical analysis, most do a mix of those. You don't need Bloomberg terminal to extract fundamentals nor alpha. Maybe a better example would be S&P Capital IQ - you can essentially replace it with agents doing the web searches and extractions for you. Another 20-50k saved.
- bfrink 1mo agoThe US publishes financial statements for free on EDGAR. But then you have to parse the unstructured data, normalize it so you can compare a bank to an airline to a manufacturer and then you have to accommodate mergers and acquisitions throughout history and every revision a company makes for prior periods, and then you're starting to talk about real money and the price of Cap IQ or Compustat or Factset starts to look pretty attractive, especially if your alpha doesn't come from your proprietary methods of databasing financial statements.
- weinzierl 1mo agoAlso, and in addition, the value of the Bloomberg Terminal is not the UI, it is the consistency. You don't pay for an accelerator and a break pedal, you pay for the 100% guarantee to find them in the place >100k people have been trained to find them.
- Bluescreenbuddy 1mo agoYou're paying for direct lines to these firms. It's a big chat/social media platform. Combined with the data and news and you got yourself a hell of a platform