Gathering Data Using the Bloomberg Terminal
FR-CR-5 – Gathering Data Using the Bloomberg Terminal
Sudweeks
The purpose of this tutorial is to help you as you prepare your analysis of your company.
This tutorial will be a first tool to help you use the Bloomberg more efficiently and
effectively. While Bloomberg is not the only tool available to help investors, it is one of
the major data providers and is used extensively in the industry. This tutorial will also let
you know all the information that is necessary for writing up your company reports. If
you have any questions or comments, please see me. Thanks.
The following are examples of how to extract information on company’s financial
information, market index levels, PE ratios, earning estimates, betas, and graphs for your
company and industry analysis. Remember that Bloomberg is a somewhat archaic
system, so you need to understand how data is organized and presented. It is a logical
format, which helps a bit.
To complete your research project, you will need many pieces of information from one of
the many data suppliers. Since we have access to Bloomberg, I recommend this resource.
You will need the following data:
1. Your company ticker symbol
2. Historical and current company price information at the company’s year-end
3. Earnings Estimates for the company to compare against your forecast
4. Historical and current market and industry index levels at the company’s yearend
5. Historical and current market and industry PE data at the company’s year-end
6. Earnings Estimates for the market and industry indices (if available)
7. Beta calculations for the company (with a minimum of 60 data points)
8. Graphs of your company versus the relevant market and industry indices.
This tutorial will help you find the above information. Please note that some of this
information will be available on your Compustat data, but you should know where to get
the data as a check on Compustat.
1. Finding Your Company’s Ticker Symbol
To get your company ticker symbol, type [Equity] or [F8] and press [Go]. Then type
[TK] which is for the ticker symbol look up, and type the name of your company. Hit the
green key [Go] or [Enter]. Bloomberg will come back with a number of names. Find the
correct ticker and write it down. You will use it for the rest of the project. To make sure
you have the correct company or equity, type the number of the correct ticker and [Go].
Then type “DES” for description. It will give you a short description about the company.
If you would like more detail, type “HH” for Hoovers Handbook, a somewhat dated
piece about the company, or “CN” for company news. Other options are also available.
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Type “FA” [Go] for financial analysis. Bloomberg has somewhat up-to-date information
on general areas of the company’s financials. Note however, that this is a secondary
source, not a primary source. They do make mistakes here and input the data into their
pre-selected categories. Keep the ticker symbol handy as you will use it for all company
related information.
2. Looking Up Historical Prices
Historical prices are available on Compustat, but you should know how to use this
function. To get historical prices for your company, type your company ticker [Equity]
and [Go]. You will get the first screen for your company. Menu items that are
highlighted indicate available information. If they are gray, that indicates the information
is not available. To get historical prices and volume, type [HP] for historical prices and
[Go]. This will bring you to the price screen. You need to know your company’s fiscal
year-end. If it is not December, you need to tab over and type “95” in the year of the
beginning date, and tab over and type “M” for monthly data. Then hit [Go], and you will
get your company prices by month for the last 5 years. Hit [Print Screen] to print this
data, paging down after the first page. Notice that it will also give you the most recent
price of your company’s stock. If there have been splits or changes, type “FA” for
financial analysis, then option 2 for historical prices. The problem here is that they only
give information for December which is useful only for companies with a December
year-end. Using December prices for a non-December company year-end is mixing
apples and oranges and is not good analysis. Bloomberg still has its challenges.
3. Looking Up Company Earnings Estimates
From Bloomberg, you can also get earnings forecasts for many of the companies you will
be looking for. To get earnings estimates for your company (if available), type your
company ticker [equity] and [Go]. Then type “EE” and it will bring up the earnings
suppliers for the index. Depending on the available suppliers for your company, you can
choose any of them. Then hit [PntScn] to copy the pages which include at least 2
analysts any of the major Wall Street research firms. Also, press [PgFwd] to find the
standard deviations and copy the page that has the standard deviation of those returns.
You will use this information on your company report write-up to compare your forecasts
with forecasts from Wall Street analysts.
4. Finding Historical and Current Market Index Levels
To get market index levels, you must first determine which market index you wish to use.
One method is to type your company ticker then “DES” [Go] for a description of your
company. Hit [PgFwd] once and you will see the indices in which your company is
included. Choose one of the major indices for the market, and another for an industry
index and write their symbols down.
For ease of use, lets assume you want to use the S&P500 Index, with the ticker SPX.
You would type in on the terminal “SPX” and then hit the yellow key which says [Index]
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and [Go]. This will bring up the general information for the index. To get the index
levels, next type “HP” for historical prices and [Go]. Use the tab to put in the beginning
and ending date, beginning with the year 1996 and ending with the current year, and tab
to the period and type “M” for month. Then hit [Go]. You will get the following screen
that gives the closing index and volume by month.
Either write down the information you need or hit [print] to print the page. In summary:
enter “SPX” [Index] [Go]. Enter “HP” for the historical prices. Hit “TAB” key multiple
times to the beginning and ending dates, and “M” for monthly for the period, and then
[Go] to accept “US Dollar” and [Go] again. Finally, hit [PRINT SCREEN] to print the
page, and [page down] to go to additional pages. To go back to the main menu, hit the
[Menu] key twice.
Notice also that on the top of the screen it gives the current index level of 1,239.39. This
is necessary for forecast earnings, as your best estimate of future prices is today’s price.
Remember, you do not forecast future prices for your stock or index—you only use the
most recent price, today’s prices as the best estimate of all future prices.
5. Finding Market and Industry Index Price Earnings (PE) Ratios
To get to the Index PE ratios, assuming you are already at the Index page, type “HE”,
and it will take you to the following screen. Again, use the tabs to get you through the
range from 1995 to 2001, and type “M” for monthly, “M” for mid, and [Go]. You will
get the following screen, which you can either copy or print out.
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In summary, to get the PE for the S&P500: Type “HE” for price earnings. Hit [TAB]
multiple times and put in your beginning and ending dates and “M” period. Hit [PRINT
SCREEN] to type out the page.
As an alternative to printing the data, you can also right click on the mouse, cursor down
to “save screen”, put a diskette in the “a:” drive, and type in a “a:filename” to save the
screen to your diskette if you wish.
With the above information, you can calculate the Index Earnings, the equivalent of
earnings per share for an index. The Index Earnings is simply the index divided by the
index PE. Calculate this on your spreadsheet.
6. Finding Forecasted Earnings for the Market and Industry Index
To get the forecast earnings for the index, type “SPX” [Index] and [Go]. If you ever hit a
wrong key, that is the easiest way to get back. You can also try [Menu] which will take
you back one screen.
To get earnings estimates for your index (if available), type “EE” for earnings estimates
and it will bring up the earnings suppliers for the index. Highlighted names indicate
available information, while gray names indicate information which is not available. In
our case, type 3 for Zack’s investment. You will get the following screen. The other
abbreviations located on page 7 can be used similarly to the above examples.
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Notice that it gives the mean, high, and low estimates, as well as the number of estimates
for each of the line items. The items represent fiscal year end estimates. 0612 refers to
December 2006, while 0712 refers to December 2007. These are the Index Earnings
numbers for the index. You must decide whether to use the High, Low or Mean
estimates. I generally recommend the Mean estimates unless you have better data. This
is not a class for forecasting the stock market.
Since we are forecasting out more years than 2007, to get the index earnings for 20082010, it takes a different strategy. You have calculated the index earnings for each of the
historical years. You are also given the index earnings for the next two fiscal years. To
get the index earnings for future years, you take the index earnings and multiply them
times 1 plus the 5-year growth percentages (in this case 8.0%) from this page. So the
index earnings for 2008 is 96.53 or 89.38 (the mean estimate for 2007) * 1.08 = 96.53
and for 2008 = 104.245.
As we discussed in class, not every company is going to have a December year-end. If
yours does, be thankful. If not, you need to adjust the index earnings depending on your
company’s year-end. For this class, we make the assumption that earnings are equally
distributed throughout the year. So if you have a September year-end, as does Apple
Computer, you take 9/12 of the current year index earnings and 3/12 of the previous years
index earnings. This will give you the correct index earnings for the forecast year.
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To calculate forward looking PE’s for the index, take the current index, 1,353 and divide
it by your new index earnings, for example, 104.245 for 2008 and that will give you your
forecast PE of 13.0x for 2008.
In summary, for earnings estimates: Type “EE” [Go] (Earnings Estimates), enter “3”
(Zack’s investment and research), and then hit [PRINT SCREEN].
7. Beta Calculations
To get the beta of your company, type your symbol and [Equity] and hit [Go]. Then type
“BETA” and hit [Go]. This will bring you to the beta screen. Tab down four times and
put in the beginning date, which I recommend to be 1995 if there are five years of data, or
whatever the beginning date if the company is newer. Then tab over and set the period to
“M” or monthly. You can set the period and the index to any index or time period you
would like, but I recommend you use your market index. The default “SPX” is generally
acceptable as well. I only require that you have at least 60 observations for your analysis.
Once the beta is calculated, hit [Pntscn] to print the page. You will use the beta in
calculating the company’s intrinsic value.
8. Graphing
Graphing is relatively easy using the terminal. First you must decide whether you want
to graph the price, relative price versus other companies or indices, or relative total
returns versus other companies or indices. To graph the price, type the ticker [Equity]
“GP” for graph and then [Go]. To graph the relative price versus other companies,
instead of typing “GP” type “RG” (for relative graphs) and [Go]. To type relative
returns, type “COMP” and [Go].
Regardless of your choice of graph, you will first come to the graphing screen. By
tabbing to the beginning and ending date periods and changing them, you can change the
period under analysis. If on the “GP” screen, you can also change the type of graphs,
whether bar chart, candle chart; whether you want to see the last traded price, bid price,
ask price, or a weighted average price. You can also set up another chart below the price
chart. Here you can see items such as volume traded, value traded, etc.
If you are on the “RG” or COMP” screens, you can compare your company’s price or
return performance versus other companies, market and/or industry, with up to three
companies or indices on a single graph. Generally, the first line will be your company
ticker and [Equity], the second line your broader market index ticker and [Index], and the
third line, your industry index ticker symbol and [Index]. Then hit [Go] for the graphs.
The graphing capabilities are quite good.
For the purposes of this class, you will graph relative returns “GP” for your company
versus the relevant market and industry index for 12 months (daily returns) and 5 years
(weekly returns). You will need to put these graphs into a Word document.
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Saving Data
After the information is correct on your graph, you have two options for saving the data.
First, you can right-click anywhere on the screen and select “Save Screen”. Insert a
floppy into the a-drive, and save the data, typing “a:anyfilename.” The graph will be
written to your floppy drive.
The second option is to type the command GRAB at the command prompt, enter your email address, and hit <GO>. This will send you to an e-mail page. Enter a subject
message, and type1<GO>, and Bloomberg will automatically send the message to your email address. Either method is acceptable.
Other Indices
Some of you may not want to use the S&P500 for your index that you compare your
company to. To get the symbol of other indices (and there are thousands), the easiest
way is to type WEI [Index] and [Go]. This will give you the screen below. To pick an
index, just type the number of the index you would like. If it is not on the screen, and it
is a US index, type 1 and it will bring up more indices. If it is an index from
Europe/Africa, type a 2, or from Asia Pacific, type a 3. From these pages you can
continue to look for other indices.
Finally, on the last page of this handout, I have scanned in a Bloomberg tutorial for
Equity Analysts. Once you have typed in your company symbol, like “AAPL” [equity]
and [Go], you can type any of the codes to get specific information, such as:
BETA
for the beta of the company
DES
for a company description
BQ
for a quick report
FA
for standardized fundamental analysis (for comparison only)
CN
for company specific news
RV
for peer group analysis
GP
for graphs.
These functions should be of help to you as you analyze your companies. If you have
any problems or need any help, I will be happy to help. Good luck on your research.
Conclusion
Bloomberg is a wonderful tool for helping you find data, but there are often mistakes, so
use it at your own risk. If something does not look correct, check it out. There is nothing
worse than doing an analysis with incorrect data as your conclusions will likely be
wrong. Use wisdom and common sense, and you will do well in your report.
If you find any problems or have suggestions for this tutorial, please e-mail me at
[email protected].
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Thanks.
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