2

I'm pretty blue in searching Bloomberg data through programming. Wondering if there is anyway I could use some programming language, like Python, to get a huge amount of data from Bloomberg terminal? Say I want to grab thousands of bond information regarding their rate changing dates during certain periods?

Brian Tompsett - 汤莱恩
  • 5,753
  • 72
  • 57
  • 129
user2540184
  • 21
  • 1
  • 3

1 Answers1

3

What you want is... to use the API. (Screenscraping is not really an option..., and why would you, when there is a pretty good API.)

Bloomberg makes it very easy to do this in Excel, and it sounds like this might be sufficient for your needs (i.e. they are localised to a specific problem). You need to install the Bloomberg API plugin. If you contact your Bloomberg representative or the helpdesk, they can help you do this.

If you are convinced that you need to do this 'programmatically', there are a number of version of the Bloomberg API written in different languages. To find out more, go to WAPI on your terminal.

However, you should be aware that there are limits to how much data you can get through the API. Bloomberg pretty hush-hush on this, but there is some information.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
amaidment
  • 6,942
  • 5
  • 52
  • 88
  • Thanks. The thing is Bloomberg people told me that API could not provide historical data for bond rating. Not sure if that could be fully trusted. Don't no why I could see it on terminal but can't get them all at once through programming. – user2540184 Oct 07 '13 at 17:37
  • @user2540184 - Bloomberg stores ratings as reference data. i.e. you can get it at a snapshot in time. I'm not aware that you can get this data from them as historical data - either in the Terminal or via the API. If you can tell me how you're getting this information in the Terminal, I can advise on how to get it via the API... – amaidment Oct 08 '13 at 10:59
  • @amaidment-I'm not sure what do you mean by historical data, but if you go to any the security description of any bond and go to the rating part, you will find the rating information for now and some previous years. Is that what you mean? – user2540184 Oct 09 '13 at 14:41