Bloomberg Terminal

Masserati of the info superhighway: the Bloomberg Terminal

John Merrick explains that the Bloomberg Terminal is a creation of the firm founded by Michael Bloomberg after he left Salomon Brothers (and before he became mayor of New York). The Bloomberg Terminal is a hardware/software Swiss army knife for traders who many times a day tap into the enormous amount of data available about securities.

Each Bloomberg Terminal has a special keyboard, the better to follow prices in real time or to parse the vast array of securities databases available through a subscription to Bloomberg’s services.

“Touch a key, you can find an entire range of analytics for any security you want,” Merrick explains. “Touch another button, all related securities come up.”

Best of all, Merrick says operation of the Bloomberg Terminal is easy to learn and students master it early in the seven-week Career Acceleration Module. CAM student Kristin Melendez agrees, saying it took her no more than a couple of weeks to learn to use the Bloomberg. She’s excited about the versatility.

“Another function, which I think is really cool, is you can send messages to any other Bloomberg user,” Melendez said. “For example, we met Mark Shenkman of Shenkman Capital when we were in New York. I can pull up his name and send him an email right through the Bloomberg Terminal. So it gives us access to all the different players in the industry.”