Bloomberg Highlights: Round 1

Bloomberg is a key source for current and historical pricing on equities, fixed income securities, foreign exchange and commodities, as well as indicative and fundamental data, customized analytics, and business news. Bloomberg has many supplementary modules that add to its value as a financial resource. This is our first installment of Bloomberg Highlights where we show off some of Bloomberg’s most interesting features.

Bloomberg’s Mapping Module (BMAP)

BMAP allows you to map world wide energy assets (oil, gas fields, pumping stations and pipe lines) and mines (coal, gold and other minerals) as well as individual vessels in ports. Energy assets can be displayed as points on a map or in table format. Below is a map of natural gas pipelines, shown in red, overlaid with US shale basins in blue.

For access, type BMAP and hit the green <GO> key

Supply Chain Analysis

Bloomberg provides data (when available) on a company’s suppliers and customers. Use the SPLC function to locate a specific company’s supply chain.  For example, to find Merck’s suppliers, customers, and peers type the following into the command line:

MRK [Equity] SPLC <GO>

World Market Capitalization

Type WCAP <GO> for a listing of market capitalization by country. On December 16, 2012, the World Market Cap was given as 54,004,372 million dollars. The total market capitalization for the U.S. on January 28, 2013 (the most current data available) was 17,840,793 million dollars, more than enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

While you are waiting for the next Bloomberg Highlights post, take a look at our Bloomberg Help Guide for additional features. There are also a number of Business FAQ’s relating to Bloomberg topics found here. Bloomberg terminals are available in Lippincott Library and in Huntsman Hall.