Bloomberg Terminal

The Bloomberg Terminal is a computer software system provided by the financial data vendor Bloomberg L.P. that enables professionals in the financial service sector and other industries to access Bloomberg Professional Services through which users can monitor and analyze real-time financial market data and place trades on the electronic trading platform. It was developed by employees working for businessman Michael Bloomberg. The system also provides news, price quotes, and messaging across its proprietary network. It is well known among the financial community for its black interface, which has become a recognizable trait of the service. The first version of the terminal was released in December 1982.

Most large financial firms have subscriptions to Bloomberg Professional Services. Many exchanges charge their own additional fees for access to real time price feeds across the terminal. The same applies to various news organizations. All Bloomberg Terminals are leased in two-year cycles (in the late 1990s and early 2000s, three-year contracts were an option), with leases originally based on how many displays were connected to each terminal (this predated the move to a Windows-based application). Most Bloomberg setups have between two and six displays. As a data analytics and electronic trading platform, the Bloomberg terminal is available for an annual fee of around $24,000 per user or $27,000 per year for subscribers that use only one terminal. As of 2022, there were 325,000 Bloomberg Terminal subscribers worldwide.

In 1981, Michael Bloomberg was fired from Salomon Brothers. He was given no severance package, but owned $10 million worth of equity as a partner at the firm. Using this money, Bloomberg, having designed in-house computerized financial systems for Salomon, set up a data services company named Innovative Market Systems (IMS) based on his belief that Wall Street would pay a premium for high-quality business information, delivered instantly on computer terminals in a variety of usable formats.

The company sold customized computer terminals that delivered real-time market data, financial calculations and other analytics to Wall Street firms. At first, the machine was called the Market Master terminal, but later became known as the Bloomberg Terminal or simply "The Bloomberg." The terminal was released to market in December 1982. Merrill Lynch became the company's first customer, purchasing a 30% stake in IMS for $30 million, in exchange for a five-year restriction on marketing the terminals to Merrill Lynch's competitors. In 1984, Merrill Lynch released IMS from the restriction.

In 1990, the Bloomberg keyboard was released with a trackball and built-in voice-chat features. In 1991, the first color edition of the terminal was released.

In 2001, Michael Bloomberg stepped away from working on the terminal to run for New York City mayor, but returned to lead the project in 2014. Starting in 2012, Bloomberg Terminal had a greater annual revenue than Thomson Reuters, the company that founded the market data business.

Currently, the hardware aspect of the terminal is only a series of accessories. Some of those accessories are a custom keyboard with special keys, a fingerprint scanner, and a dual-screen display.

Sales from the Bloomberg terminal account for more than 85 percent of Bloomberg L.P.'s annual revenue. The financial data vendor's proprietary computer system starts at $30,000 per user per year.