I understand Ninja is more common among day traders, but anyone who is/was also at a firm who used Bloomberg, or anyone else who has insight on just one of them, I'd love to hear your two cents! I was wondering others' opinions on each... to some extent they're apples to pears, but I like them both and have my opinions on which one is better.
The first one can't enough of, the latter one hopes to avoid the rest of one's life. That being said, a Bloomberg terminal is not the best fit for the kind of trading most retailers engage in. Something like RTS, CQG or TT Pro would most likely be more suitable. But, comparing Ninjatrader to any institutional level platform is just stupid.
Bloomberg Professional [i.e. download it to your hopefully supercomputer desktop/workstation and install - not lease hardware] and Ninja cover much of the same spectrum and are both comprehensive and expensive monthly/quarterly platforms. Obviously other Bloomberg services and terminal leases aren't the focus here. Have you used both? What are your thoughts on each?
comparing bbg and nt (or any other front end software) is like apples and oranges. bbg gives you EVERYTHING you could ever want albeit for a steep monthly fee (approx $1900 plus certain data fees). it's widely known that most bbg users use less than 10% of its functionality of a daily basis (it's prob closer to 5%). you can trade futs through bbg, specifically tradebook, but the user interface isn't nearly a user friendly as others (x trader, nt, button trader, etc). bottom line if you only trade futures there is no need for a bbg. be careful getting a bbg for a trial though b/c i've heard stories about how traders got it for a month and said "i'll just see what it's like but i prob won't keep it" then they get so hooked on it that they sign up for a 2 yr scrip (yes this is required - you can't go month to month).
Apples and Oragnes? No more like Apples and Volvos Too bad bloomberg doesnt offer an a la cart terminal probably would increase business by 100 percent. I miss my bloomberg. Nothing like cricket lines coming though with platinum reports.
Bloomberg is incredible. It truly is all things to all finance people. The cost is high but if you are actively managing even just a few bucks (where the cost is roughly 1-2% AUM), it quickly becomes worth it.
apples to pears? Apples to oranges? Apples to Volvos? What you don't realize is apples today are obsolete. Don't beleive me? Let me just ask any man on this site When was the last time your wife made you an apple pie? heck. most men today don't even have wives,and if they do, the only time they get anything even close to an apple pie is that crap in the corner of a microwaved lean cusine "meal." Sugar used to be a big deal. You couldn't grow sugar, you needed hard green earned or won cash to buy it. If you had sugar that meant you had a man with money. And once you had a bag of sugar you could make anything out of it. Rhubarb pie, peach pie, anything that would grow could be turned into a pie. The most famous of course was apple pie. So when was the last time your wife made you an apple pie? Yeah, that's what I thought It's like comparing Dusenburgs to Volts.