About Bloomberg
Bloomberg is a premier financial services industry data integrator providing news and analytics for over 129 countries and 250 exchanges. Offerings include 24-hour historical and 15-minute delayed securities pricing, news, data, and analysis on companies, markets, and economies. Bloomberg market coverage includes: Government, Equity, Corporate, Mortgage, Money Market, Municipal, Preferred Equity, Commodities, Indices, Currency, and Derivatives.
Please see the Pardee Library Bloomberg tutorial for additional information.
Bloomberg Keyboard Basics
Photo credit: Medium
The way to navigate on Bloomberg is to use its menu keys in combination with some command based shortcuts.
GREEN KEYS are ACTION keys.
Enter/GO – use the GO key as you would a return or an enter key on a normal keyboard.
F1/Help – use whenever you cannot find a function. Simply type what are you looking for, hit the F1/Help key and view the results. If you still cannot find an answer to your question, hitting F1/Help twice will send an email to the Bloomberg Help Desk.
Menu – use to navigate from any function back to a menu of related functions.
Pg Up/Pg Down keys – use to navigate through pages of data; or, when viewing charts, to see data used to create the chart.
End Back – use to take you back to the previous screen.
Panel – toggles between the 2 most recently used of the 4 Bloomberg screens which appear when you log in.
Print – use to print a single page; to print multiple pages, type the number of pages to print and then press the Print key.
ESC/Cancel – use to cancel the current function.
Log Off – Press once to log on using your name/password. Press once to log off.
Photo credit: Medium
YELLOW KEYS are Market Sector Keys
F2/Govt – Displays list of bonds that match a ticker symbol, coupon, and/or maturity that you select, e.g. international & US Government bonds (such as T bonds).
F3/Corp – Corporate debt, corporate bond prices, and yields by company may be found with this function.
F4/Mtge – the Mortgage menu includes information about pools and generics.
F5/M-Mkt – Money Markets includes programs, which are records containing specific issue information. Money markets are for borrowing and lending money for three years or less. The securities in a money market can be US government bonds, Treasury Bills and commercial paper from banks and companies.
F6/Muni – the Municipal markets menu contains info about bonds issued by municipalities in the United States.
F7/Pfd – Preferred pre-markets covers both public and private securities offered by countries (US & UK mostly). Types include fixed-rate issues, zero coupon issues, floating rate notes, variable rate issues, convertibles, and warranties.
F8/Equity – Displays actual trades and information about US & global stocks (listed and Over The Counter/OTC). US equity data goes back to 1980.
F9/Comdty – the Commodity menu has all exchange-listed futures & options contracts of underlying financial & physical products, i.e. gold, wheat, etc.
F10/Index – all Indicative and/or statistical data & market monitor functions are grouped here under specific categories. Two main sections include: markets & leading economic indicators.
F11/Curncy – Current markets/monitors for global currencies.
Bloomberg Help
The F1/Help key can be used at any screen or menu level.
At the cursor prompt at the top of the screen enter your term and hit the F1/Help key.
Example: Beta F1/Help
You can also email the Bloomberg Help Desk with any questions you have. Hit the F1/Help key twice. This will initiate an email window which will allow you to type in your question and communicate with Bloomberg’s Help desk. You will receive a response within 24 hours from the Bloomberg Help desk.
Bloomberg Professional Service
Type in BPS <GO> to access the resource center for cheat sheets for many of the Bloomberg functions.
Bloomberg University
Type in BU <GO> to view upcoming seminars and events, view the latest enhancements and access the Bloomberg resource center.
