Unlocking Financial Data

Chapter 3. Bloomberg

Bloomberg Professional (aka Bloomberg Terminal) is one of the most useful tools a financial analyst can have. However, even though the Bloomberg Terminal itself has a lot of functionality, it cannot match the flexibility and analysis capabilities of Microsoft Excel or Access. In this chapter, we combine Bloomberg’s financial data with the flexibility of Excel and Access to create a very powerful analytical tool. Moreover, Bloomberg’s Excel Add-in and comprehensive .NET API makes accessing its financial data simple.

We will explore the common and useful features of the Excel Add-in and .NET API; for more information on other features, refer to the Bloomberg documentation available on DAPI <GO>.

Warning

The data you extract from Bloomberg is for your own personal use. Distributing or providing access to the information you source from Bloomberg may violate the terms of your service. In addition, there are limits on the number of securities and fields that you can access in a day or month. For more information, refer to Bloomberg documentation (DAPI <GO> on Bloomberg) or ask your Bloomberg representative (BREP <GO>).

A word of caution before beginning: although Bloomberg scrubs and validates its data, it is possible that some Bloomberg information is incorrect. However, that is not an excuse for your analysis to be incorrect. Later in this book, we discuss techniques to identify and remove bad data from large datasets, but there is no substitute for reviewing ...