Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
It brings together a vast variety of otherwise extremely hard to find information. The keyboard is specialized because it literally reduces the number of keystrokes required to quickly access financial information. This is a business where seconds matter - even when you have humans talking to other humans to negotiate trades.Literally almost every piece of useful financial information is available via bloomberg. And I don't mean relatively basic info like "What's the current yield the Apple 3.85% of 2043?" or "What's the current CDS spread for Citibank?" that you can easily google for but also stuff like "Which oil tankers are in for repair right now, and what are their capacities?" and similar info on power plants, international agriculture, equities, interest rates, etc.Experienced bloomberg users have their most-used keystrokes in their muscle memory. Less experienced users can hit F1 twice and immediately be connected to a live bloomberg rep who will research your question for you (although it may take 20 minutes for them to figure it out).Bloomberg Chat is also extremely important, as others have mentioned.