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How to Research the Financial Markets?
Bloomberg and Datastream are excellent sources for detailed historical or current financial market information -- stocks, bonds, commodities, money markets, futures, etc.
Bloomberg and Datastream stations are located in the Trader's Pit area at the rear of Jackson Library. To use these resources, please check out the access binder (and password) for each at the Access Services Desk. They are restricted to GSB (and alumni) and/ or Stanford users.
Bloomberg
Bloomberg has a customized keyboard, with color-coded keys that allow one to navigate the database. Please note the unique keyboard design.
To execute functions in Bloomberg, note the three colored categories of keys -- red, green and yellow. Simply put, red keys log you in and out of the system. Green keys allow you to move "vertically" into greater or lesser detail, or "horizontally" through pages on the same level. Yellow keys direct you to the basic financial categories (stocks, bonds, commodities, etc.) The <GO> key is the Enter key.
Bloomberg offers not only detailed historical tables of data, but also a variety of pre-fab analytical graphs and charts.
You can "short-cut" to data if you already know the ticker for your instrument. Simply type in the ticker, press the relevant yellow key, and <GO>. For example, for Ford equities info, type F Equities <GO>.
Example:
NOTE: Only 'Full Service' Bloomberg allows downloading directly to Excel.
Datastream
Datastream is strong in providing long historical runs of prices and indices; it allows easy downloading to Excel. It also permits the importing of lists of your own firms (its Request Table facilitates the retrieval of multiple datapoints for pre-fab lists you create.)
The beginning search page for Datastream appears as follows:
- Select topical area at lower left, e.g. Equities, Commodities, Bonds
- Select Time Series from upper right
- Select Frequency
- Select Datatype
- Select date range
In addition to this generic search function, pre-fab sets of firms by ticker can be loaded and run against Datastream's data set. This can be done using the Request Table.
To run your own custom sets of firms against Datastream in Request Table:
- Invoke Excel and pull down Datastream-AFO at top
- Select Request Table, then New Request Table
- Enter appropriate data in the columns across. (The guide to this process can be found using Help on the Datastream screen, under 'Creating a Batch of Requests'.) For example, for Update, enter Yes; in Format, RCH will deliver data in vertical columns. Series Lookup can use CUSIPs or Datastream-modified tickers, e.g. U:IBM.
- Select and enter appropriate datatype. Remember to drag down each entry (using + at bottom right of cell) to keep all columns evenly matched in length.
- For Destination, click Worksheet from Insert pulldown (top), click on Request Table tab (bottom,) click Data Destination. The Create Destination Reference window appears; click on Worksheet tab at bottom, then click on cell in sheet where data should begin, and click OK in Reference window.
- Click on Process, and data will be delivered to the worksheet. To update Advance datafiles (if needed) use the Tools pulldown and click on Update Series coverage.
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