Bloomberg Highlights: Round 3

Bloomberg  Highlights is back again to show off more of what Bloomberg can do. For more highlights, take a look at Round 1 and Round 2.

Bloomberg Social Media Alert

Bloomberg measures the volume of postings about companies from StockTwits, Twitter, Yahoo Finance message boards, and other social media sites. When companies have an unusually large number of messages, Bloomberg lists them as “Velocity Alerts”. Such alerts may be early warning signs of significant company events.

Type NH NGV and hit the green <GO> key. Search by company ticker to find any alerts posted.

Here is a graph of the velocity alerts of Ford Motor Company showing an unusual pattern of social media alerts.

Private Company Information

Although Bloomberg is primarily a source of financial information about public companies, it does list information about several hundred private companies. These are private companies that have public debt. To see if a company is covered by Bloomberg, type the name of the company into the command line and hit the yellow <Equity> key.

For example, typing Cargill into the command line will bring up a four page company description with links to the company’s financial data.

The financial data provided for Cargill is fairly comprehensive and current.

In addition, Bloomberg provides links to the original source documents for their data. Cargill’s financial detail is given in the “Program Prospectus”.

Analyst Reports

To get access to analyst reports (investment bank reports) on Bloomberg, type the following into the command line:

Ticker [Equity] BRC <GO>

Bloomberg analyst reports are a useful adjunct to the analyst reports in Thomson One.  In a previous post “Wrestling with Analyst Reports”, we’ve outlined how to access and download analyst reports using Thomson One. For additional information on analyst reports, take a look at our Business FAQ on the topic.