Bloomberg Data Extraction

Overview

The school's Bloomberg terminals are tools which can be used to extract data on historical stock, commodity, and index pricing data. The data can be extracted all at once onto a USB flash drive, so this method is not viable for a dynamic stream of data. This tutorial will cover how to extract static data to an excel workbook.

Materials/Prerequisites

• A valid WUSTL key and password
• USB flash drive
• A list of information to be extracted

The list of information to be extracted, otherwise errors will occur when data is imported into excel. To better understand the data to be extracted, first examine the index on the Bloomberg terminal to see what types of data is displayed. For instance, interest rates do not have a daily closing price, but securities do. Additionally, some securities are actually sold as contracts, so they may have closing prices, but this is not a valid option for extracted and will present errors. These types of errors can be avoided by examining the data to be extracted in the Bloomberg terminal.

Process

Spreadsheet builder

Select Data

First go to the Kopolow Business Library on the second floor of Simon Hall, where the Bloomberg terminals are located.

• Use the training Bloomberg terminal (the first one on the left)
• Open the Bloomberg terminal and search for information that should be extracted.
• Once the ticker symbol is found, then open excel
• Open the Bloomberg tab and click "Import Data" then choose to create a historical data table.
• Once the spreadsheet builder loads, enter the ticker symbol that was identified through the terminal into the search bar
• Then hit next and choose which the fields to extract, and hit next
  • This is the tricky part. Commodities have different data tags than securities so it is important to know what information is needed in this step
• Select the date range to extract and hit next, then create
  • If today's date is chosen as the most recent date, some data fields may give an error. Example: Closing price at 1:00 pm.

Now the spreadsheet should be full of desired data. If there is an error, chances are something is not right about the data fields selected. If there are issues after correcting, reach out to a librarian. If the librarian is unable to help, then hit the F1 key and ask a Bloomberg expert. This can only be done from the training terminal.
Generally if there is no data point for a date a symbol (#N/A) will be entered as a placeholder. If this is handled when parsing the data and there is still a syntax issue, then there can be (.) as data points, so this case should be handled as well.

Authors

This page was written by the Stock Analysis group in Fall 2018.

• Keith Kamons
• Brandt Lawson
• Jessica

Group Link

See the Stock Analysis project:
Stock Analysis
Stock Analysis Log

External References

There are no external references for this portion of the project.