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Bloomberg Terminal

An overview of the Bloomberg terminal in the Parrish Library.

Bloomberg Help Resources

Overview

  • The Bloomberg terminal is a computer workstation for researchers who need extremely detailed data, news, and analytics. It is widely used by financial professionals including fund managers, investment advisors, and analysts.
  • It is located in an open area near the help desk in the Parrish Library on the second floor of the Krannert Building.
  • It can be used on a first-come, first-served basis during regular business hours, unless a reservation has been made.

  • Reservations for the Bloomberg Terminal can be made online -- login information is available at the terminal.

Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Use the green <HELP> key on the Bloomberg keyboard to get information about the screen you're currently viewing.
  • Hit the green <HELP> key TWICE on the Bloomberg keyboard to open a live chat with a Bloomberg specialist.
  • The BBG command allows you to obtain the full text of bloomberg.com articles from the terminal.

 

Cheat Sheets

Cheat sheets are a listing of Bloomberg commands for a particular topic.

Links to common cheat sheets are below and are also available on the Bloomberg Terminal by entering CHEA <GO>

Usage Limits

If you encounter data limits while using the Bloomberg Terminal please note:

You can have no more than 3500 real time fields open at the same time. If you exceed this limit you will see "NA Limit" as error message and you need to delete some securities/fields in order for the error message to disappear and to see the values. 

We also have a daily limit. The daily API limit is 500,000 hits/per day. A "hit" is defined as one request for a single security/field pairing. Therefore, if you request static data for 5 fields and 10 securities, that will translate into a total of 500 hits so try to refresh just the portion of the spreadsheet that really needs to be refreshed and avoid refreshing it all or reopening it many times a day. 

There is also a monthly limit, however only about 0.4% of the user database ever go over this limit. The limit is based on unique securities and depends on the type of data being downloaded. 

Please see the document below for information on managing data usage limits.