Has the recession got to bloomberg yet? Are they still insisting on 2 year contract and $1500 a month? Anyone find it more useful then the cheap software only systems?
Bloomberg is the high-end brand of financial news and information services. Don't expect to see it on sale, but it is well worth the cost.
a lot of what you are paying for is the high quality and guaranteed network connection that is not dependent upon a public internet provider. The contractual obligation cuts both ways, because they WILL fix it if goes down. Really , it is the difference between having a DSL connection and your own T-1 line. Sure the DSL is good, but it isn't guaranteed, and it is therefore much cheaper. Now if a prop firm offerred bloomberg, THAT would justify the desk fees. A related matter is that I wouldn't want to be in a trading room that didn't have a guaranteed land line connection like a T-1 line.
Bloomberg is still expensive: For an individual Bloomberg is overkill IMHO. There are aspects of their contractual datafeed that are useful but their terminals leave a lot to be desired: many other trading systems offer a better and more useful UI IMHO. Also, their feed is not 100%: we had it go down (albeit for small increments of time). If I was building a trading system - like for one of my past bond fund clients - I would use it. For an individual doing less than a million in profit a year I would go elsewhere.