Why are some of the most widely used protocols and data streams on Wall Street so antiquated? I’ve been working recently to interface my employer’s product with Bloomberg security data. FTP? Flat-file format? Errrr… I’m surprised they didn’t ask me to use punch cards to send my request via US Mail.
Now my first thought was that our client (on whose behalf I’m implementing this interface) is too cheap to get an upgrade on its Bloomberg License. Still, that doesn’t really make sense when upgrading to real-time quotes and reference data updates would have a significant upside for its traders.
No… I think this is all Bloomberg’s doing. They’ve got antiquated software that’s clearly (as far as I could discern from the API documentation) running batch jobs to query their data feeds and… well, you know… concurrency is, like, really hard. 😉 Then again, it could simply be that, like Microsoft and other pseudo-monopolies out there, Bloomberg knows he’s got the best data on the street and his clients will do just about anything to get to it. Clearly, if indices, quotes and credit events were drugs, Bloomberg would be the Pablo Escobar of the digital age.