Bloomberg Terminal

What You're Getting

Bloomberg Terminal provides real-time and historical financial market data: equities, fixed income, FX, commodities, derivatives, economic indicators, corporate fundamentals, and news. Accessed via the Bloomberg API (BLPAPI) from a licensed Terminal session, or via Bloomberg Data License (BDL) for server-side bulk delivery. Coverage is comprehensive — 35M+ securities. This is a paid enterprise data source.

Ingestion Strategy

Two distinct delivery modes: (1) BLPAPI — real-time/request-response from a Terminal session; requires Bloomberg B-Pipe or Terminal API connection. (2) Bloomberg Data License (BDL) — scheduled bulk file delivery via SFTP; standard pattern for data warehouse ingestion. For ETL/data-lake use, BDL is the standard approach — negotiate delivery frequency, security universe, and field list with your Bloomberg rep.

# BLPAPI (requires active Terminal or B-Pipe connection)
import blpapi

session = blpapi.Session()
session.start()
session.openService("//blp/refdata")
request = session.getService("//blp/refdata").createRequest("HistoricalDataRequest")
request.getElement("securities").appendValue("AAPL US Equity")
request.getElement("fields").appendValue("PX_LAST")
request.set("startDate", "20230101")
request.set("endDate", "20231231")
session.sendRequest(request)

Rate Limits & API Details

• BLPAPI: limited by Terminal license; typically 1 concurrent session per Terminal license
• BDL: negotiated bulk delivery (nightly/weekly SFTP); field and security limits per contract
• Historical data via BLPAPI: subject to per-request limits; use HistoricalDataRequest for time series
• Bloomberg Open Symbology (FIGI): free alternative for security identification

Schema Stability

Bloomberg field mnemonics (e.g. PX_LAST, EQY_SH_OUT) are stable. The Bloomberg ID (BBGID) and ticker formats are well-documented. Corporate actions (splits, mergers) are tracked and adjustable — always request adjusted close prices explicitly. Field availability varies by security type and license scope.

Data Quality Gotchas

• License scope: your contract defines which securities and fields you can access — build validation to detect empty responses caused by license restrictions vs actual missing data
• Point-in-time vs current: Bloomberg defaults to current data; for historical fundamentals, use periodOffset or BDL override fields to get point-in-time
• Currency exposure: prices are in security's native currency unless you request FX override
• Corporate actions: use dividendAdjusted and splitAdjusted flags consistently or build your own adjustment logic

Tool Compatibility

• Python: blpapi official SDK; xbbg and pdblp provide pandas wrappers
• R: Rblpapi package
• BDL files: typically pipe-delimited or fixed-width — parse with standard tooling
• Not compatible with open-source Airbyte connectors (proprietary)

Benchmarking Approach

S&P 500 closing price for a known date should match within $0.01 of exchange-reported value. Daily price series for AAPL US Equity should have no gaps on US trading days. For BDL: verify file delivery timestamp is within SLA window. After corporate actions (splits), verify adjusted close prices are recalculated correctly for historical periods. Alert if security universe count drops >1% unexpectedly.