Bloomberg trading terminals go offline, roiling bond markets

Bloomberg&#039;s financial trading terminals blacked out on Friday

(Image credit: CC by: E.W. Scripps School of Journalism)

For at least two and a half hours early Friday — an hour before Asian markets closed and right as European markets were opening — Bloomberg's ubiquitous data terminals went dark. More than 315,000 traders and other financial professionals use the Bloomberg terminals to get market data and news, and to chat with fellow traders, and the outage appeared to be worldwide. Some banks in London said the terminals were working again by mid-morning.

Most trading firms have other ways of accessing market information, often through competing terminals from Thompson Reuters, but many traders aren't used to relying on the Reuters boxes, and Bloomberg is much stronger on bond data.

"This is sort of a big deal," a Hong Kong banker tells The New York Times. "What I miss is the instant Bloomberg chats, which I rate higher than trading or data feeds. The fact is, Bloomberg connects 100 percent of the street, and all that human intelligence is what makes markets hum."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.