Finance & Investment Group (FIG)
Bloomberg Terminal Workshop
By: Justin Monaco (jmonac3@uic.edu)
Introduction Video: https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/products-solutions/
To set up a new Bloomberg account:
Double click the Bloomberg icon on the desktop of the machine to open Bloomberg.
Select the Create New Login option below the username and password fields.
Follow the instructions to set up the account.
Bloomberg will text you an activation code, which you can enter to complete your account setup.
Keyboard:
The Bloomberg keyboard is color-coded to provide users with quick access to data and functions.
Yellow Keys - Market Sector Keys (F2 – F12)
Green Keys - Action Keys
Red Keys - Cancel & Log Off Keys
Keys to know:
Esc/Cancel - Think of it like a normal Escape key. Striking it will stop whatever you are doing.
Enter/GO - Think of it like a normal Enter key. You will use this after every command that you enter.
Print - Press Print once to print the current page or enter number of pages you wish to print & Print (ex. 5 Print)
Menu - Press Menu to navigate from any function back to a menu of related functions (and ultimately back to the main
menu).
End/Back - Will take you back to the key previous screen.
Help - Press Help key once to display help function and a description of the current function that you are using. Press
help two times to email the Bloomberg 24 hour help desk.
Upon Login:
4 Separate Bloomberg Screens will appear. These screens work independently from each other. For this introduction,
please only use 1 screen and minimize the other 3.
Framing what the Bloomberg Screen looks like:
o Top Left on home screen – Back/Forward & Book-marks
Similar to a web browser’s previous & forward page.
Gray boxes are your current Book-marks and Related Functions Menu.
o Top Right on home screen
Message (Green “Message” short-cut on keyboard)
Similar to E-mail & Instant Messaging. Over 350,000 Business professionals are
interconnected thought this terminal.
Favorites (Image of a STAR )
Add/Edit favorites – any page that you find interesting and would like to go back to it in
the future, add it to your favorites.
My functions – These are just a list of commonly used functions on the terminal. Think
of functions such as an App on your phone. You perform different tasks.
BOX with arrow –
This control allows you to take full screen shots, take a partial screen shot, print the
current page you’re on & allows you to EMAIL the screen also
Settings –
Select the screen size you would like. And login off the terminal. Short cut is to Rightclick
Help (F1 Green short-cut) –
Pulls up a description of the current function you are currently on in order teach
yourself what you’re looking at
o Command Bar
Similar to a Google Search bar. The Bloomberg terminal is entirely discoverable from the
command line, which appears across the top of every Bloomberg panel. If you know exactly
what you need on the system, you can use the command line to enter direct commands, such as
a function or security ticker. If you know what you want but you don’t know how to find it, you
can use the command line to search by keywords
Examples - Enter these examples into the command line
People - Janet Yellen
Companies - Tesla
Tickers – “AAPL” Apple Inc.
Weather – Weather
News – Top news
Jobs – Similar to UIC’s Job postings
What is a “FUNCTION”?
Functions are applications designed to provide targeted information and analysis on either the broad financial
markets or on a specific security. Each function has a mnemonic (short name) used to identify and access the
function quickly
Further Bloomberg Training:
Bloomberg University – BU
o Seminars & Events - Bloomberg hosts classes on how to use this terminal.
o What’s News – Bloomberg 19,000 employees are coming up with new functions daily to use
o Marketing Resource Center – Brochures on how to use a Bloomberg Terminal
Bloomberg Certificates:
Bloomberg Market Concepts – BMC
o Any one in here currently doing this or has already been certified
o This is a self-paced 8-hour e-learning course that cover 4 different areas.
Economic Indicators
Currencies
Fixed Income
Equities
o You receive a certificate at the end of it that you can place on your resume so that employers see that
you understand the Bloomberg Terminal. And if any of you are planning on taking your CFA – this counts
for 8 credit hours. You will also learn over 70 different functions and how to use them.
o Sign-up & Login
Major functions:
Help – (Green “Help” short-cut) or (Green “Search” short-cut)
o Help - Press Help key once to description of the current function that you are using. Press help two
times to email the Bloomberg 24 hour help desk.
Top News – TOP
o TOP allows you to see headlines of the day’s top worldwide stories from various news sources, along
with editorially curated charts and news digests, so you can access the most important new sin one
place. You can browse top stories by predefined categories, such as finance and technology, to better
understand the breadth of the day’s current events. You can also narrow the deadlines that appear and
quickly translate top stories into another language.
o Click-on any news story and refer to the RED toolbar on the top
SEND – Direct you to your Bloomberg email address. If you found an article that is interesting,
you can send it to someone.
ACTIONS – Print (Green shortcut), download…etc.
Career Center – JOBS
o JOBS allow you to search for or post jobs on the Bloomberg Terminal, so you can meet your job seeking
or hiring needs.JOBS allows you to perform an advanced search and save or set alerts on specific search
criteria, whether you are job seeker or recruiter. As a job seeker, you can build a resume that is
searchable by recruiters.
o Click-on > Job Search > Advanced Job Search
Enter search criteria
Example: City > Chicago > Update > Search
o Click-on > Build Your Resume
Fill out your job experience, education, contact info
o Click-on > Edit Settings
Enter your geographic location
Bloomberg Intelligence– BI
o BI provides analysis on industries, companies, and expert topics, delivering key data and interactive
charting from BI analysts. Topics include government and legal issues; environmental, social, and
governance (ESG) standards. This extensive data across industries are located on this easy
multifunctional platform so you can gain deeper insight into an industry or top. BI allows you to
download data, so you can create your own models and analysis.
o
o
o
Left side
Sectors & Topics – Allows you to browse dashboards from more than 100 industries and special
reports.
Right side
Research from analyst
EXAMPLE:
Click-on > Energy > Solar Energy Equipment
Click-on > Industry Primer (located under the RED Toolbar)
Overview of the solar power industry. If you want to become knowledgeable in the any
area, these primers really help
Send and or Export to PDF
Try for yourself and explore > Use the back arrow or the (Green “End/Back” shortcut) to return
to previous page
People Profiles - BIO
o BIO gives you access to Bloomberg’s vast database of biographical and contact information, so you can
conduct research on prominent global figures and enhance your contact network. You can also manage
your own personal profile in the Bloomberg directory.
o Elon Musk
Security Analysis:
Command Bar type in > Tesla
o 3 sections:
Functions > BIO’s of people associated with the company
Securities > Tesla Motors Inc.
Search > Topics related to the word “Tesla”
Command Bar type in a specific company’s ticker symbol > TSLA (Yellow “Equity”)
o Quote Line (Green “Quote Line”)
Includes the ticker at the top left, and pricing/value data to the right and below
o Security Menu appears
The related analytics sections display a range of menu categories and suggested functions that
relate to the loaded security, allowing you to quickly access commonly-used functions, as well as
brose for new analytics to deepen your analysis.
Supply Chain – SPLC
o SPLC provides a comprehensive supply chain breakdown for a selected company, so you can analyze
revenues exposure for central company, its suppliers, and its customers, as well as track the
performance of a company against its peers
Excel Template Library – XLTP
o XLTP is a library of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that allow you to perform custom analysis. XLTP
houses over 325 unique spreadsheets, categorized by market sector, player type, and region. XLTP
allows you to browse spreadsheets by category and spreadsheets by keyword, as well as store
a list of favorites. Once you have located the spreadsheet you need, you can open it directly in Excel.
Portfolio Administration – PRTU
o Create
o FALL 2016 PMT Portfolio
Current vs. Cost
Analyze
Portfolio & Risk Analytics– PORT
Equity Screening – EQS
o EQS allows you to screen for companies that meet a customized set of criteria so you can generate
investment ideas, create lists of securities to follow, and validate your trade ideas by seeing how they
performed historically. You can create criteria based on categories such as sectors or countries, as well
as create criteria based on data fields including fundamentals, estimates, and financial ratios. You can
analyze growth, trends, and estimate revisions over time, as well as compare data against benchmarks
or relative data.
TRY IT YOUR SELF – Enter PMT’s screening criteria!
Add Criteria
1. “S&P 500 Index”
2. P/E < 25
3. P/FCF < 25
4. P/S < 10
5. “Short Interest percent of Equity Float < 15”
Other Functions:
Bloomberg Map – BMAP
o This is a function like Google Earth but faster, easier to use, and more clear. It's especially useful for
anyone that deals with energy and commodities because you can get alerts on weather events (like
earthquakes) and then see, for example, what mines or (say) nuclear plants are in the area.
13F Filing Summaries – FLNG
o FLNG organizes historical and current global 13F regulatory filings into one searchable platform, so you
can stay informed of 13F filings from the institutional investment managers with whom you do business.
FLNG provides a detailed analysis of the changes and asset allocations reflected in the 13F on both an
individual filer and aggregate fiscal period basis, so you can determine investors core holdings. You can
activate filing alerts, set favorites.
o The function allows you to sift through 13F filings to get a sense of what investors like Warren
Buffett and Carl Icahn did with their money over the prior quarter. The function displays a table of the
investor’s holdings and can be sorted by how much they increased or reduced their position in each.
What is a 13F Filing?
Every quarter, institutional investors must report any significant stock sale or purchase
to the government in what’s known as a 13F filing.
Mergers & Acquisitions – MA
o MA allows you to track and analyze mergers and acquisitions data in real time, so you can stay informed
about all transaction-related activity occurring across numerous regions and sectors and easily filter for
deals by a range of dimensions, such as deal type, size, and adviser.
o
Equity Offerings – IPO
o IPO allows you to monitor equity offerings by stage, region, industry, and other criteria, so you can
analyze offering activity and performance, as well as identify investment opportunities. IPO gives you
the tools to define customs search and filter criteria, so you can quickly find the deals that match your
investment and analysis objectives.
Sample Launchpad Views - LPSV
o LPSV allows you to access a curated collection of sample “Launchpad” views, so you can quickly create a
workspace catered to a specific asset class, job function, or region. Each sample view provides a
description and preview to demonstrate how you can use Launchpad components in a practical
workflow scenario.
Part 1:
1) From Bloomberg, download the exchange rates of 6 foreign currencies (at least 2
of them have to be from emerging markets) including the dollar.
2) Compute the one-year appreciation or depreciation against the dollar
(Hint: Remember, ($: U.S dollar, X: The foreign currency that you have chosen)
St(X/$) = Beginning Rate
St+1(X/$) = Ending Rate
The % appreciation (or depreciation) in X can be calculated as;
[(Ending Rate – Beginning Rate) / Beginning Rate] x 100
3) Explore recent exchange rate trends for the pairs of countries that you have
selected (the time window depends on your choice, the wider the better). To plot
trends, download the series to a spreadsheet.
4) Try to plot examples of some fixed and floating rates. Can you tell from the data,
which countries are fixed and which are floating?
5) In the plots, can you locate data for an exchange rate crisis within your
time-window?
Part 2:
Imagine you are a carry trader. Obtain one-month Swap rates for some major
currencies: US dollar, pound, euro, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, Canadian dollar, and
Austrian dollar (Hint: Google “ft.com money rates”). Find the lowest yield currency and
call it X. How much interest would you pay in X units after borrowing X 1,000,000 for
one month? (Hint: The raw data are annualized rates.) Compute the exchange rate
between X and every other high yield currency Y. For each Y, compute how much X
would be worth in Y units today, and then in a month’s time with Y-currency interest
added. Revisit this question in a month’s time, find the spot rates at the moment, and
compute the resulting profit from each carry trade. Did any of your imaginary trade
pay off?
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