So I work in a large corporation and happen to work next to the Treasury department. There is a Bloomberg Terminal on our floor and I was told to feel free to use it… and I want to. Anyone have any good experience or have heard of a good online resource to learn independently to use a Terminal?
Thanks!!
There’s some training on there. It’s not all that hard.
Get on the online help via the terminal and tell them you are a new user and need help. They are extremely helpful and will likely send out a rep onsite to give you a full runthrough of the functionality you need. If they don’t send a rep, they will at least point you in the direction of good online help. Also, don’t be shy to use the online chat help WHENEVER you need it. Your company is paying a ton of money for this service and it’s there for you to use whenever you need, even for stupid questions. They answer questions faster than pretty much any 3rd party vendor I have ever dealt with (immediately or within 5 minutes most of the time).
Any company that has a bloomberg terminal also has a bloomberg rep that is available to come to your office on demand and personally train you. Probably 75% of my bloomberg reps have been 20-something year old females. I have had a lot of training sessions.
When I was in uni we had to complete some bloomberg certification things that I think were part of the terminal itself. If I recall, you watched the video and then completed some tasks or something like that. And as has been mentioned, they are super quick. I worked on a project for our central bank involving some heavy data importing and manipulation etc. and relied on the helpdesk pretty heavily.
Tap the help button twice for a chat feature. It’s nice for quick questions. As others have said, it’s like learning Microsoft for the first time, not too hard.
Tap the help button. They are *required* to answer your questions. A rep told me during a walk through of the terminal how there was a guy notorious for asking really silly questions and the people had to figure out ways to get the data for him. And do the training – I think it actually is a certificate program or something after completion.
It’s actually simple. But looks intense. It’s just like the rest of finance – impresses people who have no idea how to use it and sacrificies user friendly-ness in the process.
Thanks guys, that was very helpful!
Immediately open an Excel workbook with Bloomberg open and begin learning how to use the Bloomberg API functions, and learn how to use BDP formulas. The custom data feeds you can build are amazing. Particularly powerful when used in conjunction with VBA to attack certain analyses.
QFT
This.
I got Bloomberg certified in both Equity and Fixed Income. And haven’t looked at a terminal since. I don’t even know if there is one within 300 miles of me.
I’ve always found the help help on bloomberg slow and horrible.
^ Agreed, anything other than a very simple request/question goes either unanswered or takes a LONG time to get resolved.
^I’ll usually ask a question and then tell them I’m going away for a bit. They’ll usually message you the answer later. So long as they know enough to give you the right answer, it’s no biggie. The only issue is when you’re not sufficiently clear and they give you the wrong stuff.
My office has yet to have a BB rep that wasn’t male 
I used to get cute female BB reps. However, the latest rep they sent was a guy. Wtf Bloomberg? Don’t they realize what we are paying for?
I had one that was super cute once, and just once. I would let her show me whatever she wanted every time she came in. Current rep is ugly so I tend to blow her off.
OP - BU {go} on the terminal.
OP-What exactly are you hoping to use the termnial for? In addition to online chat help directly from BB, I’ve found a lot of useful guides via Google search. Most are topic specific and are put together by business schools for their students but can be downloaded by anyone.
The training is a pretty nice feature. It’s pretty easy to use but it’s one of those things if you don’t use it you lose it.
Have fun!
I would say most of my reps have been 5-6s at best, but at least theyre female. My current one is a 7 so I friended her on linkedin.