Bloomberg for Energy Commodities
A breakdown of Bloomberg functionality used on the trading desk
If you are fortunate enough to have access to a Bloomberg Terminal you are probably already aware of its sophistication and might. From market news and charting, to data and analytics, it really is the premium tool to have in a traders toolkit. I have also used Reuters Eikon in the past and while it is great for some things I would argue that the comprehensive offering via Bloomberg is far superior.
All that being said, the Bloomberg reps are unfortunately not super great at providing the most relevant and important functions when going through the onboarding session and therefore most users are left to old desk manuals or handovers with traders and analysts on their floor to learn the tricks of the trade. Until now.
Please see below for an organized breakdown of my favorite functions and examples of how I use them on a daily basis. I’ve tailored the list specifically to energy commodities to give you a curated list for keeping up with markets and broad industry trends.
If you are not yet in a full-time role, most business school university libraries have a terminal or two (hopefully more) and I would highly recommend doing some tinkering prior an internship or full-time, especially if you are starting out as a fundamentals-type analyst on a trading desk. It is an easy way to stand out early and often if you don’t need your hand held to run simple analysis with agility and precision.
Happy hunting.
News
First Word (BBG: FIRS OIL, FIRS GAS) - excellent source for near-live market news for the Oil & Gas Industry, very useful to have included in your Launchpad
Daybreak (BBG: DAYB) - go-to source of Macro information in the morning
Oil and Gas Weekly Agenda (BBG: NSUB WKOIL) - go-to source before you pack up on Friday afternoons and start looking at your schedule for the following week. Typically released on Friday’s this schedule provides a comprehensive overview of contract expiries, major meetings, economic releases, etc.
Oil Brief Americas Daily (BBG: NSUB OILBRIEFAM) - go-to source to keep up with broader crude markets
Oil Barometers (BBG: NSUB OILBAR) - go-to source to keep up with technicals, commodity ETF flows, etc.
Economic Data
Daily Economics Brief (BBG: NSUB ECONBRIEF) - comprehensive breakdown of major economics releases and key signposts
Economic Calendar (BBG: ECO) - comprehensive schedule of all economic data publications/releases
Currency Rates Matrix (BBG: FXC) - live currency rates matrix
Pricing Data
Exchange Contracts (BBG: CTM) - the most useful tool for translating an exchange ticker to the ‘Bloomberg security’ version. You can use the far right column in CTM to query the exchange ticker in order to return the Bloomberg nomenclature.
Security Finder (BBG: SECF) - allows you to look up anything that is ‘tickerized’ on the Bloomberg Terminal whether it be a price or data item
Commodity Fair Values (BBG: CFVL) - I don’t tend to give much value to the ‘Bloomberg-assessed’ fair values but you can go into the settings and amend the data source of the price feeds to the exchanges directly (ICE/CME) making the tool much more useful
Swap Data Repository (BBG: SDR) - solid source to see off-exchange swaps being transacted. If you are unfamiliar with SDRs I highly encourage you to look up their history as it essentially resulted from the Great Financial Crisis and Dodd-Frank legislation
Custom Index Library (BBG: CIX) - allows the user to build custom indices. For example, if you are trading a relative value spread with conversion factors you could build the arithmetic into a custom ticker to be used across the suite of Bloomberg analysis tools and charting.
Charting Tools
Volume at Time (BBG: IVAT) - can be really useful during large market moving news to see volume analysis compared to trailing history at various intervals
Intraday Chart (BBG: GIP) - intraday chart, fairly customizable
Seasonality Chart (BBG: SEAG) - extremely helpful using the ‘spread builder’ function to quickly do a historical analysis on calendar spreads; useful in analysis of a proxy and helping to form trade ideas
Candlestick Chart (BBG: IGPC) - intraday candle charts
Other
Whisper (BBG: WHIS) - allows user to post estimates and see peer estimates for major storage inventory reports published by the EIA; Oils on Wednesdays and Natural Gas on Thursdays. Market activity is usually ‘bullish/bearish vs. expectations’ with most of the price action pinned against the ‘expectation’ number which is often the Whisper number on Bloomberg.
Commitment of Traders (BBG: COT) - comprehensive breakdown of various market players net long/short positioning
Global Commodities Trade Flows (BBG: AHOY) - commodity import/export data
Global Commodity Flows (BBG: LINE) - especially good on the US natural gas side you can easily drill down into template supply/demand balances by region; super helpful for a Day 1 natural gas analyst trying to understand flows and market dynamics across the Lower 48 US
Commodity Fundamentals (BBG: FDM) - repository to drill down into DOE/EIA/Baker Hughes and other vendor data offered directly through the terminal
Crack Spread Analysis (BBG: CMSP) - quick way to build oil cracks, refinery margins, crush spreads, and NGL frac spreads
Weather Forecasts (BBG: WFOR) - easy way to see weather forecasts; particularly useful on the natural gas and power trading desks; useful on the Launchpad of a natural gas/power analyst
Resources/Help
API Developers (BBG: WAPI)
What’s New in Commodities (BBG: NEWC) - outline of new functionality offered by Bloomberg specifically for commodities; if you are looking for cheat sheets for oil & gas functions on the terminal go to NEWC > click ‘Commodity Resource Center’ in the top right corner > child window will launch > click ‘Commodities’ > click ‘Cheat Sheets’
Excel Help (BBG: HELP DAPI) - quick reference guide for using the excel add-in including historical and real-time pricing formula syntax; how to pull data into excel using the add-in