Gloomberb

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.

> They're paying for the data source

Yup.

If you want fixed-income data, Bloomberg is the only shop on the street data-wise.

If you want other financial data, Bloomberg's fixed entry-point pricing tends to make more sense in terms of bang for buck than its competitors modular price sheets.

People saying Bloomberg is just about the chat are simply embarrassing themselves.

Look at the price sheets of Eikon, Factset, CapIQ etc. There is no such thing as a cheap "Bloomberg killer".

Quality data is expensive. So are the leased-lines it arrives at Bloomberg on. So is the data wrangling architecture.

To be fair, I don't see anywhere on this page where they try to suggest that this is competitive with a Bloomberg terminal.

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.

Correct. Also, Bloomberg has messaging for traders that is actually an important network effect in certain domains.

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.

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

The source is prominently linked: https://github.com/gloom-sh/gloomberb

> please don't write command line tools in non-compiled languages!

Around 40% of Linux CLI tools are written in interpreted languages.

Agree. If you really want to know what's used here: probably uses bun single-file executables[0] so shouldn't clash with anything else on your system.

[0] https://bun.com/docs/bundler/executables

I know where you're coming from. I've been worried about all the supply chain attacks on npm too. And I'm far from a security expert. However, if you're okay with installing binary packages via `curl somesite.com | sh` I don't think you are in a better position with regards to security.

Yeah, I think a few of the widgets here are neat and useful. It's not a Bloomberg replacement, but it might be a good replacement for a few tabs? You could get the info elsewhere, but I like this presentation more.

Edit: Ah, they're offering a pro subscription. While I appreciate that cloud services aren't free, I'm not sure that I'm willing to pay to replace a few browser tabs. Not for me, but maybe for someone!

My observation is that finance and banking and corporate functions high enough up the ladder operate more like a clubhouse than cutthroat businesses. You’d think all you need to do is make a better interface, but if you’re not part of the club, you’re not doing the business (or even getting shot at it).

People repeat this rhetoric all the time, but I promise you, finance professionals can and do easily migrate to other messaging platforms such as ICE chat. This isn't a moat for BBG

Looks like Yahoo and the SEC for filings: https://github.com/gloom-sh/gloomberb/tree/cd82b5c61a8d0eb0d...

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).

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.

It is becoming very hard not to use an LLM. I have been working on a project all this year. I started doing everything by hand, and I am using LLMs a little bit more every day. I suppose we want to use projects that were crafted with care, whether or not LLMs were used. But it is not easy to figure that out. It reminds me. 30 years ago, before code formatters were popular, you could tell good code just by looking at how carefully formatted it was.

same and for some reason people are downvoting. why would we use vibecoded stuff with sensitive information?

my first thoughts too.

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?