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Bloomberg Functions
To be more productive, faster, and more efficient when performing financial analysis or research it’s important to be proficient at using the Bloomberg Terminal. That means knowing the most important Bloomberg functions.
Whether you work in investment banking, equity research, or other areas of the capital markets, you’ll have to learn how to use the Bloomberg Terminal for grabbing historical financial information about a company, share prices, transactions, bonds/fixed income information, and much more.
Here we have compiled a list of what we believe are the most common and important functions, keystrokes, and shortcuts to know on the Bloomberg Terminal, inside out. Bloomberg functions mastery is key to becoming a great financial analyst.
List of Bloomberg Functions
News
The top news functions include:
Shortcut
Description
Uses
N
News
Main News menu
TOP
Top News Stories
Filtered view of the News function, shows headlines of the day's top stories from BLOOMBERG NEWS
TOPCA
Top News Stories Canada
Filtered view of the News function, shows headlines of the day's top stories from BLOOMBERG NEWS for Canada
NSE
News Item Search
Custom news search
NSE CNS
Canadian Stock Markets
Filtered custom news search constrained to Canada
NSE USS
U.S. Stock Markets
Filtered custom news search constrained to US
NSE MNA
Mergers/Acquisitions
Filtered custom news search constrained to Mergers and Acquisitions
NSE OPN
Opening Market Commentary
Filtered custom news search constrained to Opening Commentaries
NSE US COS
Corporate News
Filtered custom news search constrained to US and Corporate News
NSE BBEA
Earnings Up & Downgrades
Filtered custom news search constrained to Earnings and Downgrades
Broad Market Screens
The top broad market screening functions include:
Shortcut
Description
Uses
WEI
World Equity Indices
Allows you to monitor and compare real-time price and volume data for the world's equity indices.
WPE
World P/E
Allows you monitor and analyze key fundamental ratios, such as price/earnings, across major equity indices and compare intra-day index level ratios against analyst estimates and other regions.
ECO CA
Canadian (& U.S.) Economic Releases
Economic calendars of real-time and upcoming economic releases, commodity, government, central bank and industry data, and events.
ECST
Economic Statistics by Country
Provides economic data with organization and context and allows to analyze multiple datasets using graphical and table formats.
MOV
Index & Industry Group Movers
Shows stocks that drive the movement of a selected index or other equity group.
MA
Merger/Acquisition Database
Allows tracking and analyzing mergers and acquisitions data in real time and easily filter for deals by a range of dimensions, such as deal type, size, and adviser. Also allows finding deal-level data. Additionally, allows searching for comparable transactions.
WFX
Cross Currency Rate Monitors
Gives an overview of currency rates in real time, also provides information on pricing hours for better monitoring.
FXC
Currency Rates Matrix
Allows monitoring cross currency spot, forward, and fixing rates.
RATC
Rating Revisions Monitor
Displays a list of current and historical credit ratings for up to 10,000 issuers, allowing to track upgrades, downgrades, and other moves that reflect the issuer's fiscal strength and degree of risk.
BTMM
Interest Rates & the Bond Market
Shows all major rates, securities, and economic releases for a selected country.
USSW
Treasury I Swaps Monitor pages
Provides current interest rate swap rates, along with government, agency, index, LIBOR, and futures markets rates, plus economic statistics.
FIT
Fixed Income Trading
Fixed income electronic trading platform for U.S. rates and a broad set of global sovereign debt.
WB
World Bond Markets
Monitor and chart sovereign bond yields, spreads, and historical performance on one screen, along with current yields, spreads and current rates' statistical deviation from averages.
CDR
Markets Calendar
Shows when markets are open/closed and when they are operating on a partial day schedule.
MMR
Money Market/LIBOR Rates
Displays a menu of real-time global money market rate monitors for comparison against composite prices, third party prices, and electronic trading prices.
SRCH
Corp/Govt/Convert Bond Search
Create customized lists of loans, government and corporate bonds, structured notes, municipal bonds, and preferred securities from the Bloomberg database.
CRVF
All Yield Curves – Treas/Muni/Corp
Allows to search for curves, filtering by asset class, and country/region and/or sector.
PICK
Muni Offerings
Monitor U.S. municipal bond market offerings, bids wanted, and reported transactions in one place.
Market Performance/Screening Tools
Market performance shortcuts include:
Shortcut
Description
Uses
BI
Bloomberg Intelligence
Sub-platform that provides research on industries, companies, and expert topics, delivering key data and interactive charting.
MOST
Most Active Securities
Displays different trading activity performance metrics of a specified security, such as Volume, Chg Up, Chg Down, Value, Delta AVAT, 52Wk Highs and 52Wk Lows.
FPC
Mutual Fund Ranked Returns
Allows comparing the returns and monitor the performance of a list of funds over a given period, and filtering by country, fund type, sector, and fund family name.
ECDR
IPO Calendar
Allows monitoring equity offerings by stage, region, industry, and other criteria.
PDF
Default Settings: Graphs, News, Messages
Allows configuring service default settings all in one screen, including country/region, primary and secondary exchanges, news sources, and other defaults.
Company Screens
Bloomberg company screens include:
Shortcut
Description
Uses
DES
Corporate Description
Consolidated financial information for a specific financial instrument, such as a bond, loan, swap, index, futures contract, stock, warrant, option, fund, money market program, currency, or preferred security.
MGMT
Executives & Board Directors
Displays company management information about top-ranking executives and board members for a selected security.
CN
Company News
Filtered view of the News (N) function for a loaded security.
ISSD
Financial Overview
Displays the issuer description in the Security Description (DES) function for bonds.
RELS
Related Securities
Provides a comprehensive overview of a security's issuer, including company description and fundamentals, debt obligations, equities, and related financial instruments.
Fundamentals & Earnings
Fundamental and earnings research functions on Bloomberg are:
Shortcut
Description
Uses
FA
Company Fundamentals
Provides comprehensive financial information for a company, including historical fundamental data and future estimates, as well as aggregated fundamental data for global equity indices.
DVD
Dividends, Stock splits
Displays the history of a company's distributions. History includes cash dividends and other distributions, such as stock splits.
ERN
Earnings Summary
Allows for comparison of historical announcements for the stock against consensus estimates.
EE
Earnings Estimates
Provides a snapshot of aggregated broker earnings projections, surprise earnings data, and a summary of earnings history.
GE
P/E Graph - Valuation
Filtered view of the Graph Fundamentals function (GF), allowing for visual comparison of a company's fundamentals with those of other companies, indices, commodities, and economic data.
EM
Estimates Matrix
Provides comprehensive earnings trend analysis for a selected equity, including an annual and quarterly breakdown of actual and estimated earnings trends.
ANR
Analyst Recommendations
Shows analysts recommendations for a selected equity and allows for monitoring of changes in opinion and analyzing the quality of analyst predictions.
PHDC
Institutional & Insider Holders
Menu that allows searching for holders whose trading activity may influence the price of a selected security.
CRPR
Credit Ratings
Allows for analysis of credit worthiness of a debt issuer or specific fixed income security by displaying both current and historical credit ratings from different ratings agencies in one screen.
CACS
Corporate Action Calendar
Displays a calendar of corporate and municipal actions for a single security, including events such as stock buybacks, capital changes, and distributions.
CF
Corp Filings – SEDAR/EDGAR
Provides access to publicly available filings for research purposes.
Today’s Markets
Recent events:
Shortcut
Description
Uses
GIP
Intraday Price Graph – up to 240 days
Visual time series analysis tool used to evaluate a security's intraday price trends for a period of up to 240 days.
QR
Time/Sales (Quote Recap)
QR displays a quote-by-quote and trade-by-trade history for a selected equity.
BQ
Customizable Company Overview
Povides detailed quotes, valuation and earnings ratios, peer activity, consensus forecasts, past performance trends, and related news headlines for an equity, equity option, or fund.
BAS
Broker Activity Summary
Provides broker activity summaries for exchanges, preferreds, equities, commodities, futures, warrants, REITs, funds, ETFs, and bonds.
AQR
Average Quote Recap
Displays the Top Trades in the Price and Volume Dashboard (VWAP) function.
VAP
Volume At Price
Displays the Volume at Price tab in the Price and Volume Dashboard (VWAP) function.
TSM
Trade Summary Matrix
Displays the Trade Summary Matrix tab in the Price and Volume Dashboard (VWAP) function.
OMON
Customizable Option Monitor
Provides real-time pricing, market data, and derived data for exchange-traded call and put options for a selected underlying security in a customizable screen.
Comparative & Historical Analysis
Powerful Bloomberg screens for fundamental research:
Shortcut
Description
Uses
RV
Competitor Relative Value
Allows performing relative valuation analysis on a security against comparable companies or examining the relative richness/cheapness of a bond.
COMP
Comparative Total Return
Allows comparing of returns of a selected security for up to five other selected securities, including its benchmark index and industry group (if available).
TRA
Total Return for 1 Security
Allows for calculation of the total return for a security over a specified period of time, using criteria such as price at horizon, commissions, and reinvestment rate.
GP
Historical Graphs/Table
GP and its related charts (GPC, GPO, GPF, GPL) and study functions (RSI, MACD, BOLL) are visual time series analysis tools used to put financial data into context.
GPO
Bar Chart
Displays the open/high/low/close chart view of the Price Chart (GP) function.
HP
Historical Price Table
Displays a security's price, yield, and/or volume plus the close, open, high, and low prices. The historical price table shows pricing and volume data for a security over a specified period of time.
SI
Short Interest
Allows reviewing short interest information for equity securities that trade on certain exchanges.
G
Custom Technical Charts
Allows you to create and organize all of your custom charts.
Index Analysis
For analyzing an index or indices:
Shortcut
Description
Uses
TRAY
Total Return
Displays the simple, annualized, and semi-annualized price appreciation of an index for 20 different time periods.
MOV
Index Movers
Allows analysis of the stocks that drive the movement of a selected index or other equity group.
MRR
Member Returns
Ranks the members of an equity index, basket, or portfolio by price appreciation or total return.
MEMB
Member Weights
Displays the members of an index and its current weightings, along with shares and price performance.
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Bloomberg in Financial Analysis
In addition to using Bloomberg functions on the Terminal, analysts must also be good at integrating Bloomberg into Excel.
Analysts will often build custom formulas that pull data directly from the Terminal to their desktop where it can be integrated into financial analysis, financial modeling, and valuation work.
Thank you for reading CFI’s guide on Bloomberg Functions List. To keep learning and developing your knowledge of financial analysis, we highly recommend the additional CFI resources below:
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