Are there any fundamental L/S funds that don't use Bloomberg / BBG Terminal?
As someone who has spent a good chunk of his career outside finance, it keeps amazing me how much Bloomberg can charge for a product that looks and feels like it's from the 80s. The data isn't even very clean, and the research, models, and news are also available from other sources (e.g., Visible Alpha).
But everyone seems to be using it ... people joke that this is because of the network effects of Instant Bloomberg (= the chat feature), but even IB has a terrible UX.
Have any fundamental L/S shops found a way to replace BBG completely? If not, why not? I'm curious.
I’ve never heard this take because at least in my experience bbg has one of the greatest depths of data available across all asset classes at a moments notice. If you’re just using it cover equities and just doing pure fundamental research it’s a bit of overkill but the depth of data available on it + its incredible yet simple to use excel APIs make it easily one of the most useful software on the market.
Will admit it’s user interface is a bit wild if you’re not used to it but the iconic black and orange is just its staple
Yeah fair, I trust you that they have much more data than I even know existed. I indeed mostly use the equities stuff.
BTW, I'd argue that even the Excel add-on feels a bit clunky and buggy :-)
I kind of laugh at this because you have no idea how good Bloomberg is until you try to use any of its competitors e.g. factset or Workspace/Eikon. Those two are so inferior on data depth and accuracy, ease of use, news, innovation, tech support etc. that it makes you want to kiss Michael Bloomberg's feet. I'm not even mentioning the network effects. There is a reason bbgs dominance remains.
Because it is a fucking good product.
And so far I haven't found a single place that you can get news as fast or as complete as BBG. I'm more than willing to hear about them.
There's no product as comprehensive as Bloomberg, but there are plenty of new solutions that implement certain functionality better and in a more user friendly way (Visible Alpha for models, various companies for truly live transcripts, AlphaSense for digging into news/research, ...).
AlphaSense is not a great product for the steep price point.
I entirely agree. I think outsiders judge on ui, while for insiders ux is crucial. I don't want to spam, but I am working on a "bbg with industrial intelligence" and I'd love to hear feedback from you. I've personally worked mostly on fundamental research on companies and industries, and felt the financials/market data a bit limiting. My idea is to have all non-traditional datapoints (products, end markets, production locations, etc.) accessible as today quant data is. What do you think?
look into developing bloomberg api/apps within the ecosystem. target market with money is already there and they'll pay to enhance ux and you can charge +10k per mo if it does the work of one new undergrad analyst. if its robust enough with enough users bloomberg will just buy you out and roll it in to all. god speed.
interested in chatting?
the only problem i have with bloomberg is it isn't that easy to track my portfolios performance there. the PORT screen has been tough to work with and takes forever to load. is it possible to get a good setup here? some of my colleagues use factset and seem to have a better handle on this
Yeah, the PORT functionality is one of the many examples of BBG's terrible UX. It's less intuitive than Unix kernel level programming.
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