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
I am not making this up.
There were custom frontends that would enrich things like cusips.
You’re thinking of investment banking, corporate finance. Trading has always been the place folks from less privileged backgrounds got into finance. In the old days, Jews. (Like, into the 50s.) In the 80s, poor schmucks.
I’m not in the trading world though so I haven’t met the ones that don’t fit this description.
But exactly zero of the people I know who were raised in either poverty or mediocrity are traders or involved in finance, aside from maybe accounting.
Of course, this is all anecdotal - but I’ve only ever seen Bloomberg terminals outside of office settings in the apartments of wealthy children.
Perhaps things were a bit different decades ago, in the scrappy past, but it feels like most higher earning spheres are closing in around pre-existing wealth.
I was. Algorithmic derivatives. The rich kids went into banking. Their connections bought deal flow. Those of us from public universities mostly went into trading. It’s why it’s been looked down on within Wall Street since basically ever.
> I’ve only ever seen Bloomberg terminals outside of office settings in the apartments of wealthy children
Parents buying their kids Bloomberg terminals aren’t looking for them to get into trading, they’re training them to start a hedge fund.
(I’d also guess a minority of folks with a BB are traders. It’s really more of a vetted calling card.)
What's the equivalent of hacker news for financial folk?
The dedicated fiber drop was most likely for reliability, not for latency.
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.
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.
Financial information should be free for everyone.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
(I’d especially love to see some federated social feature built in!)
There is not a single reason for Bloomberg’s dominance but the one feature that keeps people on it is the chat.