Yeah... people aren't paying Bloomberg $31,980 per year for a TUI. They're paying for the data source... and I don't think you have Bloomberg's connections.
Asked a dear friend in the finance industry what he thought about Bloomberg. He's the type of guy who uses these systems daily. Mostly paraphrasing:
1) Bloomberg was lightyears ahead of anything else in the pre-internet days, so there's a lot of UI familiarity.
2) Bloomberg's chat is important because, as a hedge fund or investment bank, the chat is how you buy and sell bonds. You agree to the trade in the chat, then tell the back office folks to execute the trade. Direct quote: "I'd wager 90% of the ~400 trillion in annual bond trading value happens over Bloomberg DM"
3) Bloomberg is the biggest and best aggregator
This is fascinating to be because I always assumed latency was the key. After all, the only Bloomberg terminal I've ever seen in person was hooked up to its own dedicated fiber drop. It seems like the chat and sheer breadth of data are the differentiators.
Financial companies are cutting down on the amount associates can bill the firm for a $30 dinner, and the time before they can have the firm pay for a $30 car ride home. They definitely wouldn't pay for Bloomberg if it could be easily replaced.
Bloomberg terminal is only $133/day (assuming 240 work days per year). So, while $32k/yr seems expensive at first glance, given the total annual cost of an analyst or trader, it's not huge. Of course, they'd rather not spend the $32k/yr if they could avoid it, if bloomberg can give you an edge on just one or two trades a year, you come out ahead. So...
It's really useful to have a chat app that is gatekept behind a 20k/year+ subscription. It's a particularly useful signal if someone is offering you a million+ dollar asset for sale.
I get that, was more curious if you knew how much that is used for signaling and the traffic there. I sort of expected these communities to exist in other sources (like regular SMS / Slack / private back channels etc).
> They're paying for the data source... and I don't think you have Bloomberg's connections.
We keep seeing hundreds of Bloomberg competitors mimicking the interface and they always forget that the chat (with the connections), data and the newsroom are the reasons why Bloomberg's network effect is close to impossible to break.
Using the Bloomberg Terminal is taught very early at colleges for any finance professional, which is how they get them as well.
actually a lot of data is not included in the standard bloomberg license and you have to pay extra (mostly passing through to the data vendors) to get access to it.
There is not a single reason for Bloomberg’s dominance but the one feature that keeps people on it is the chat.
Here's an article. Basically if your trading stocks no. If you are trading different instruments or want interaction with the money folks (connections) yes.
https://financetracked.com/bloomberg-terminal
From it:
"Bonds and Fixed Income: It provides the best data for interest rates and debt markets.
Global Economics: It easily connects data from different countries, such as currency rates and government debt.
The Chat Room: The messaging system is the industry standard. If you want to talk to the biggest players in the market, you often need to be on Bloomberg."
Bloomberg Terminal costs ~$24K per user per year, so the fact that people are paying for it implies it offers at least that much value. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, most of that value lies in the data sources.
> The download button doesn't even work properly. Clicking download in the top right gives me a .dmg, the other download button in the hero gives me the .exe, the one in the footer gives me a .dmg
I mean, it works for me?
The site is clearly not ready and maybe they didn't expect people to find it, but that doesn't mean the site is bad.
It is just a work in progress.
I'm not even interested in the site anyway the software and the source interests me more.
When I see new software now, my first thought is an LLM wrote it and it makes me not want to use it. I also assume there are bugs and it’s not particularly feature-rich.
Useful on its own merits.
Everybody who's distracted by the name and can't get past it, there's a thread developing here somewhere, where they're comparing it to Bloomberg.
Yeah... people aren't paying Bloomberg $31,980 per year for a TUI. They're paying for the data source... and I don't think you have Bloomberg's connections.
Asked a dear friend in the finance industry what he thought about Bloomberg. He's the type of guy who uses these systems daily. Mostly paraphrasing:
This is fascinating to be because I always assumed latency was the key. After all, the only Bloomberg terminal I've ever seen in person was hooked up to its own dedicated fiber drop. It seems like the chat and sheer breadth of data are the differentiators.Bloomberg is big enough that different aspects of the system are going to be absolutely key for substantial subsets of its customers.
Financial companies are cutting down on the amount associates can bill the firm for a $30 dinner, and the time before they can have the firm pay for a $30 car ride home. They definitely wouldn't pay for Bloomberg if it could be easily replaced.
Bloomberg terminal is only $133/day (assuming 240 work days per year). So, while $32k/yr seems expensive at first glance, given the total annual cost of an analyst or trader, it's not huge. Of course, they'd rather not spend the $32k/yr if they could avoid it, if bloomberg can give you an edge on just one or two trades a year, you come out ahead. So...
To be fair, I don't see anywhere on this page where they try to suggest that this is competitive with a Bloomberg terminal.
The name
Inspired by and competing with are different things
Correct. Also, Bloomberg has messaging for traders that is actually an important network effect in certain domains.
Can you elaborate on the network effect piece? Curious about that
It's really useful to have a chat app that is gatekept behind a 20k/year+ subscription. It's a particularly useful signal if someone is offering you a million+ dollar asset for sale.
I get that, was more curious if you knew how much that is used for signaling and the traffic there. I sort of expected these communities to exist in other sources (like regular SMS / Slack / private back channels etc).
Same effect as a country club. You know a lot about the person you’re talking to just based on their presence.
That's a cool way of putting it, thank you!
Good thing they're not asking $31,980 per year for it then?
> They're paying for the data source... and I don't think you have Bloomberg's connections.
We keep seeing hundreds of Bloomberg competitors mimicking the interface and they always forget that the chat (with the connections), data and the newsroom are the reasons why Bloomberg's network effect is close to impossible to break.
Using the Bloomberg Terminal is taught very early at colleges for any finance professional, which is how they get them as well.
I think it is more oriented towards retail investors (if anybody) than professional users. In theory it could compete with TradingView?
(I’d especially love to see some federated social feature built in!)
Is it still though? I have a few finance friends and they all seem to be on TradingView these days
does the author claim to be a bloomberg clone?
Some of us are just here for the æsthetics! Plus I already have the SEA100 "Centerboard" with chrome accents, and this will help complete the look.
actually a lot of data is not included in the standard bloomberg license and you have to pay extra (mostly passing through to the data vendors) to get access to it.
There is not a single reason for Bloomberg’s dominance but the one feature that keeps people on it is the chat.
it's a GUI and a TUI, pay attention to the screenshots
Does the GUI have Bloomberg's data source?
Interesting project, the view looks like gpui based interface, but source code say that it is web based interface written on typescript
this looks neat, what's the data source and latency?
Looks like Yahoo and the SEC for filings: https://github.com/gloom-sh/gloomberb/tree/cd82b5c61a8d0eb0d...
Which is not great for history, right? Seems like a real detractor.
You pretty much need $30/m subscriptions for historical data. Not that it couldn't be worked into this.
Was just about to ask on data sourcing, I imagine yfinance is used but can't really tell for anything else (like for prediction markets or news data).
For news: https://biztoc.com
An aside - do tools like this (or what it's modeling, the Bloomberg Terminal) really offer that much benefit to finance folks?
Here's an article. Basically if your trading stocks no. If you are trading different instruments or want interaction with the money folks (connections) yes. https://financetracked.com/bloomberg-terminal
From it: "Bonds and Fixed Income: It provides the best data for interest rates and debt markets. Global Economics: It easily connects data from different countries, such as currency rates and government debt. The Chat Room: The messaging system is the industry standard. If you want to talk to the biggest players in the market, you often need to be on Bloomberg."
Bloomberg Terminal costs ~$24K per user per year, so the fact that people are paying for it implies it offers at least that much value. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, most of that value lies in the data sources.
gloom.sh/docs - 404: This page could not be found.
What I pressume is the text for "Gloomberg" in the Hero header looks very fucked up
https://imgur.com/a/ssiKckF
Hopefully it's not intentional
Yeah, looks totally broken on my machine too.
How much intent can you ascribe to any of this?
Looks fine on my end (Firefox).
what platform is that? looks fine on mine
Gloom Harder?
looks fine on my machine
How well do you think their terminal works if they couldn't even spend the time to clean up their vibe coded website?
> How well do you think their terminal works if they couldn't even spend the time to clean up their vibe coded website?
Your website is literally down.
https://i.postimg.cc/YCdkwZZq/image.png
And I don't think their website is that bad.
> And I don't think their website is that bad.
The download button doesn't even work properly.
Clicking download in the top right gives me a .dmg, the other download button in the hero gives me the .exe, the one in the footer gives me a .dmg
Docs give me a 404, blog is empty
> The download button doesn't even work properly. Clicking download in the top right gives me a .dmg, the other download button in the hero gives me the .exe, the one in the footer gives me a .dmg
I mean, it works for me?
The site is clearly not ready and maybe they didn't expect people to find it, but that doesn't mean the site is bad.
It is just a work in progress.
I'm not even interested in the site anyway the software and the source interests me more.
https://github.com/gloom-sh/gloomberb
When I see new software now, my first thought is an LLM wrote it and it makes me not want to use it. I also assume there are bugs and it’s not particularly feature-rich.
my first thoughts too.