I don’t even know where to start, I like many of my peers was distraught on what to do for my next blog post, since I checked off student life, and was saving academics for my last blog post in the light of an upcoming class trip to the MoMa. With career being my last workshop left, I decided to turn to the trusted Baruch email, where the weekly newsletter highlights the week’s key events and workshops. I immediately saw “Bloomberg” on many dates, uncertain of what it was I decided to pursue it anyways, due to it being flexible with my schedule. I am so happy I decided to go! Being, undecided in my major (in terms of whether I want move forward in Economics or Finance) the workshop opened my eyes, and just made my decision even harder. The Bloomberg Trading System, was founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, and the system comes with a rather hefty price tag at 24,000 a year. However, Baruch in the stock floor offers 11 of these computers, meaning they have 11 subscriptions. At first, I was like how could such a little colored keyboard cost so much, when there are alternatives like Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, and even one provided by CNN. But then as the workshop I quickly began to understand, why thousand of subscribers use the system. One of the things that I found most interesting was, the little question mark symbol that appears on each of the Bloomberg screens, and once you click on the question mark it explains whatever you are looking at. The system also has a help and search button, however it isn’t like any other. That is because, When you press that green search button (familiar to the Bloomberg keyboard), it opens the search engine,and you can put in any trending queries or what you’re looking for, when you type what you’re looking for, press enter or go. What comes up is a help menu, that will try to figure out what you’re looking for, whereas, the left hand side gives categories, narrows it down to what you’ll most likely be looking for. This can be used if you’re unsure what bloomberg has. A little tip is, by pressing F1 key, does all of this with skipping the steps. The workshop also taught me, the function of: Ticker F8 and DES, Ticker F8 RV, Ticker F8 ANR, Ticker F8 GP, where ticker is the company’s abbreviation (e.g Visa, its ticker is V). The blogpost is to limited to explain it all, but if you are interested, Bloomberg University events, classes, and web events that you can sign up for. You Can even make your own sign up, build your own portfolio, and watch your own information, but must sign up at the terminal(Stock Room).
