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Help Accessing Resources: Bloomberg

Accessing Bloomberg Online

Due to the current COVID situation, Bloomberg is now available online. This is a temporary measure in light of the current situation and replaces the physical PC terminals that were available previously in the Library and Moore Annexe. The College has 16 licences, so only 16 users can access Bloomberg at one time.

There are two ways to do this:

To access Bloomberg:

  • Students and staff need to have a Bloomberg terminal login. If you don’t, the PDF document below this text box details how to create one via the Bloomberg market concepts (BMC) training website  https://portal.bloombergforeducation.com/

  • All users still have to phone Bloomberg Customer Services on 02073307500 to activate their licence 
  • Bloomberg will allocate you one of the College's serial numbers, and no more than one person can be connected and using that licence at a time. (Bloomberg are hoping to launch a pooling system soon which will allow multiple users to log in at the same time).

Basic Commands

Main Menus & Security Specific Functions

  • When first introduced to the Bloomberg system it is advisable to use the main menus. This helps the user get a feel for the broad scope of Bloomberg and to clearly see a list of the analytics (and associated function codes) that are available.
  • Once a Bloomberg user is more familiar with the various function codes they may simply type those codes directly onto the screen and access the function instantly (thus saving time and bypassing the broad menus).

When you want to go back to the 'home' screen (start over) type:  HOME.  This is the page that appeared when you logged in.

If you type MENU, this takes you back to the main menu of your current search. 

 Security Specific example

To go to Microsoft's Historical Line Chart (stock prices), you could type:
MSFT US <Equity> <GO>       You would see a menu, from there select item 17, for Historical Line Chart, with the mnenomic 'GP'                                       OR type:  MSFT US <Equity> GP <GO>    This by-passed 2 additional steps: 4 <GO> 1 <GO>
MSFT US <Equity> GP W <GO>  This by-passed 2 additional steps & set graph to weekly using W for Weekly

Top 5 Bloomberg Questions

1. How do I search for a company by name?

Type the company name at the cursor prompt and select the company from the list of suggested companies that appears below the name you typed

OR

If you do not see your company name in the list of suggested companies, hit the <HELP> key and then click onCompanies or Equities

2. How do I use the graphing function?

Enter:

G <GO> then choose 1 <GO> to create a new graph. Follow instructions to set-up a graph.
 
3. How do I find Exchange Rate information?

For Exchange Rates by region enter:

<CRNCY> TKC <GO>

For World Currency Rates enter:

<CRNCY> WCR <GO>
 
4. Historical Pricing
You can click on the historical pricing option in the company’s menu.
Alternatively if you know the ticker symbol  you can search this way:
Enter:

Ticker Symbol <EQUITY> HP <GO> for Historical Prices

Ticker Symbol <EQUITY> GP <GO> for a Historical Price Graph with Volume
 
For example if you were searching for British Airways you would search:
BAY <EQUITY> HP <GO>
Top tip – you can export all the Historical Pricing information from the GP menu by right clicking on the graph and selecting export data to excel.
 
5. How do I find a list of bonds from around the world?

Enter:  WB <GO> for a listing of benchmark government bonds around the world

Getting started guide

Help and activities using Bloomberg

On the Library Moodle page, there are helpful videos to guide you through using Bloomberg and accessing th vast array of information it has! It also has activities for you to help you use Bloomberg yourself and develop these very desirable skills that many employers look out for.

Bloomberg Student Webinars

Bloomberg hosts webinars for students at the end of every month, on the last Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday. Sign up using the links below:

Tue Equity 3pm and FX 4pm
Wed FI 3pm and Commodities 4pm
Thursday PORT 3pm

The links for each webinar are below:

FI http://tinyurl.com/yakz7vyo
Equity http://tinyurl.com/y7fmcuur
Commodities http://tinyurl.com/ydb43nyo
PORT http://tinyurl.com/ydx9m9sz
FX http://tinyurl.com/y9aus6cg

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Royal Holloway Library LibGuide by Royal Holloway Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.